The relation between lies, disinformation and ever changing stories: The Ukrainians

Some people say lying, promoting disinformation and publication of mystifying scenarios with all kinds of versions of the truth is a sign of guilt… especially when the Russians are concerned. But what did the Ukrainian regime or people close to them exactly do the first days after MH17 was downed?

Well, they did this:

1. Supporting a deliberate misinterpretation and manipulation of the meaning of a retracted posting, published on a pro-rebel site dedicated in name to the commander-in-chief of the DPR forces Igor – “Strelkov” – Girkin (published on 17 july).

With this the story was set on track that the separatists would have made a fatal mistake by downing the wrong plane.

Deletion of a message on the VKontakte webforum “Strelkov_info“, dedicated in name to the commander of the DPR forces Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, with the quote above was deliberately misinterpreted. Assumptions the information came from the chief with his finger still on the trigger were used to support a narrative that the message was eventually retracted to conceal evidence of an implicit confession that the separatists had downed MH17 by mistake.

The origins of the bits of information as shown in the message, were collected by an editor of this webforum from postings on social media, ie. the webforum antikvariat.ru, indeed a message board on which Strelkov posted occasionally. However, the original messages were written by someone with the nickname Margot_Donetsk, who herself assembled her postings with information going around social media.

In fact, pro-rebel outlets or separatist affiliated people like Margot could not find any official report from within their armed forces until considerate time after the crash.

More, see: Myth of the fatal mistake: How the infowar started

and:  Old narrative fails, but Strelkov did it anyway

Still Ukraine treats the messages from the social media message board Strelkov_info (and messages from Margot_Donetsk on antikvariat.ru) as first hand accounts made by Strelkov or his direct subordinates, as is seen in their criminal case against the former commander (see screenshot below).

 

 

The second building block of the fatal mistake narrative comprised the spliced-and-edited Bezler-Kozytsin tapes – issued a few hours after the pro Kiev network relays were filled with screenshots of the retracted Strelkov_info message. See item 2. below.

 

2. Publication of the fake “Bezler-Geranin-Kozytsin confession tapes”, actually matching events from the 16th glued to 17.7 scenes from separatist reconnaissance troops finding debris from MH17, to further bolster the fatal mistake narrative (17 July);

Now JIT formally endorsed the Ukraine-at-war/Bellingcat launch spot, no one ever dares to talk again about those SBU tapes featuring a story Cossacks from Chernukhino would have shot down MH17, which fell down outside Enakievo.

Bellingcat tries to whitewash SBU stuff again (update)

In a report named “Birdie comes to you”, published on 19 June 2019, Bellingcat brazenly tried to make sense of the Bezler confession taps including the Birdie comes to you taps (see item 9. in this list). The tapped conversation shown in a video provided by the SBU on July 18th, eventually was deviating from the official narrative at such a profound level that virtually nobody brought them up for almost 5 years. Still Bellingcat gave it a try:

Struggling with logic and proposing a myriad of theoretical possibilities the collective tried to tie this story to the disaster that happened on the 17th. The fact that Bezler gave in his converstation with GRU man Geranin the Miner’s group the credits for the downing was based on a possibility this group could allegedly have had some minor involvement in the events on the 17th “… which prompted Bezler to boast to Moscow [ie. Geranin; HR] about the involvement of his own subordinates in the downing [of MH17]”. They did not shoot it, but Bezler told “Moscow” anyway to gain credits for it.

The part of the tapes in which Bezler said “the plane fell just outside/beyond Enakievo” was solved by Bellingcat by entirely dismissing the 13:00 shooting of a SU25 over Gorlovka/Horlivka on 16 July, as registered in the ASN Wikibase (see below):

The plane was hit near Horlivka – north-west from Enakievo, so “outside Enakievo” – according to pro-seperatist message boards. It was forced to land, but managed to fly back to airforce base Mirgorod with a tail of black smoke behind it.

Apparently Bezler was not aware the plane had been able to get away at the time of his conversation. Also Colonel Cassad live journal, who brought the news much later, was still not informed officially about this escape:

“UPD 2: A Sukhoi jet was shot down over Gorlovka [Horlivka], it was leaving towards Mirgorod with a dense black smoke, it is not likely that it is going to make it.¨

However, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported that it had returned:

“Today, July 16, at about 13.00 during a combat mission in the area of the anti-terrorist operation an SU-25 was damaged by terrorists from a portable anti-aircraft missile system. The pilot (…) made an emergency landing successfully. The commander of the plane was not injured. The plane has minor damage and is subject to restoration“

Having read this news, we should remember the following lines from the tapped conversations, in which Bezler also made notice of the smoke, as was reported by the proseparatist message boards:

Igor Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. That was “Miner’s group¨. It fell down beyond Enakievo (Donetsk Oblast).

Vasili Geranin: Pilots. Where are the pilots?

IB: Gone to search for and photograph the plane. Its smoking.

However, according to Bellingcat the emergency landing did not count as a downing and neither Bezler reporting that the plane was smoking, rang any bells. The separatists had lied about alleged downings all the time, so this apparently could not account for Bezler’s tapped lines:

“With no other known incidents reported [apart from the downing of a SU25 near Hryhorievka in the evening; HR], Bezler’s main argument—that his conversation with Geranin concerned talk over an Su-25 aircraft downed on 16 July near Yenakieve—appears to be an attempt at manipulation.”

Reasoning behind this conclusion is buried in the fog-of-war as it is totally unclear why the above shooting and forced landing could not count for a perceived downing as mentioned in the tapes.

Then finally, of course, the Chernukhino checkpoint as a launch site was kind of off base (see map below), so that was still a thing that could not be solved. Bellingcat decided to just leave it with that.

“It remains unknown why Major initially reported to Grek that the Chornukhine Cossacks were responsible for the downing of MH17.” (p. 35)

So, MH17 was not shot by the Miner’s group and not from the Chernukhino checkpoint. Bezler reported a downed plane that was smoking – though the vessel managed to fly back after it made an emergency landing – and the event even was reported by the separatists and the Ukrainian MoD. On the 16th, that is.

Still, Bellingcat speculated out of its way to glue this event from 16 July to MH17, whitewashing a clear SBU forgery along the way.

 

Even after this blatant SBU forgery the JIT still shows a lot of trust in SBU tapes, which all show strange irregularities. This also casts doubts on the value of its investigation.

More, see: Writing a crime play (and showing the SBU taps are frauds)

 

3. Brokering a story of “terrorist” (=separatist) guilt and false testimony by pushing witnesses from a select group of Torez/Snizhne based pro-Kiev infowarriors to regime friendly western news outlets, presumably via the advisor for the Ministry of the Interior, Anton Gerashchenko.

A. Alleged launch plume photographer Pavel A. issuing accusations in a Business Insider article (17 July);

Aaron Geller of Business Insider contacted Pavel presumably because the latter had posted a tweet in which was said: “In Torez  a plane shot down! It fell near the quarter!“. Pavel deleted this tweet, as he did with his replies to Aaron Geller, but they were captured anyway. Of course the odds Geller had found Pavel are far less than the odds someone had made him aware of this witness.

Apparently Pavel was not in charge of disseminating information about the picture of the alleged launch plume himself (this appeared to be the job of his friend WowihaY who was in contact with advisor for the Ministry of the Interior, Anton Gerashchenko), as he told Business Insider nothing about him taking the photo which would become the cornerstone of evidence of a Buk launch from rebel held territory.

More, see from p. 5-6 in report: The trail that wasn’t a launch plume – a reconstruction

B. Andrey T. issuing a statement about seeing the launch plume in an article by NBC News (17 July).

Not only were Pavel and Andrey two acquaintances of Buk sighting tweeter WowihaY, they also were two of the few witnesses of the launch plume known in public.

At the JIT pressconference, held on 28.9.2016, a new image of the alleged launch plume was shown. Though the JIT claimed to have found it themselves only “in spring 2016 after intensive research”, the picture appeared to have a connection with Andrey T.

So Andrey T. would not only have seen the plume when walking home from work, but after more than two years it became clear he also had captured it on tape with a camera running at an observation post while he was away.

More, see section II, “Problems of the sightings on social media” in Problems of the track-a-trail narrative – a review and

“JIT comes up with crap launch site (and gets away with it)”

 

4. Publication of the fake Khmuryi/Motel intercepted telephone calls, spliced and edited to construct a narrative of a “big terrorist convoy” consisting of vehicles of battalion “Vostok” and the Buk (18 July).

The SBU intercepted a telephone call between second in command of the DPR forces Sergey Petrovsky [nowadays Dubinsky] aka “Khmuryi” and deputy commander of the Vostok battalion, San Sanych. Though the impression was layed out Khmuryi agrees with Sanych to take the Buk in a column of a Vostok convoy, driving from Donetsk to Marinovka on the 17th, the Buk did not go with Vostok as footage of that day testifies.

Khmuryi orders Buk at San Sanych’s? (update)

While the SBU claims Sanych is Khmuryi’s deputy, he actually was deputy of Aleksander Khodakovsky, commander of Vostok.

Below, a screenshot form the tapes: The SBU claims Sanych would be Khmuryi’s deputy, which is disinformation. Actually Sanych was deputy of Khmuryi’s foe Alexander Khodakovsky.

Between him and the leaders of the DPR forces, Khmuryi and Igor Strelkov, existed a lot of animosity, which even had led to fightings in Donetsk city. Both DPR commanders did not trust Khodakovsky and his troops, as they claimed they were extortionists and black marketeers. This way it is almost incredible to suggest they would ever allow Vostok to get hold of a Buk unit.

Another conversation between the two may attest to this. According to the SBU and JIT Khmuryi had “ordered” the Buk with San Sanych on the evening of July the 16th.:

Khmuryi: “If I can receive a Buk in the morning and can send it over there that would be good. (…) If not, things will go totally fucked up.”

Sanych: “Well, look Nikolayevich… If you need it… we’ll send it over… to your area.”

Taken into account San Sanych’s subordinate position acting as a commander of a column of non-Russian auxiliary forces, it´s not very plausible that he would have had the power to arrange at short notice a high-value war asset at the general’s office in Russia – or even, as is suggested, to come up with a Russian Buk himself. That’s just ludicrous.

In a blogpost I argued Sanych could not deliver it, but he could transport it in a column with tanks – whenever Khmuryi could get hold of a Buk.

Funny thing is the last words heard of the intercepts, though not transcripted, show a very strange continuation of the conversation. According to a native speaker Khmuryi would have said (as a joke) to kill Sanych for his proposed delivery of some (presumably anti-aircraft) hardware to Marinovka. With the animosity written above in mind this could make sense after all.

Of course the question remains why Khmuryi ordered the Buk to go with the Vostok tanks, according to the SBU tapes, and why the transport did not take place after all…

 

Nevertheless several sources, official and unofficial, peddled the story of a big terrorist convoy containing a Buk that was accompanied by a.o. a “truck mounted with a machine-gun” (KAMAZ), a unique Vostok vehicle that was not even on the road that day. This story would match the suggestion laid down in these tapes, which were released by the SBU on July 18th, but was not describing real events.

More, see:

The 17 July sightings: Planting evidence in advance? and

“JIT comes up with crap launch site (and gets away with it)”

 

5. Publication at midnight (by InfoResistance, Euromaydan and Anton Gerashchenko) of coordinates, locating the Buk on the exact same position as the Buk from the “Snizhne Buk video”, to support a story of a Buk flight to Russia, but by Marinovka via the T0522 instead of Krasnodon (see below).

 

INFORESISTANCE (led by Dmitry Tymchuk) – 0:32 AM, 18 July

“According to operational data group “Information Resistance” Russian terrorists quickly evacuate the territory of the Russian Federation SAM “Buk”, which shot down a passenger airliner “Malaysia Airlines”. At the moment the terrorist machine column routed from the town of Snizhne in the direction of the state border on the highway Т0522. The column of the SAM “Buk” has passed the point 48.011623, 38.763036.”

 

ANTON GERASHCHENKO (advisor of the Ministry of the Interior) – 1:41 AM, 18 July

“This very moment Putin in a desperate attempt to hide the consequences of his deeds is trying to hide a rocket complex “Buk” on Russian territory. Ten minutes ago a row of military machinery including the above–mentioned “Buk” has passed the point 48.011623, 38.763036 on the road T-0522. It is only ten kilometers left to Russia.“

The disinformation disseminated just after midnight on the 18th contained a few important features. First, it said the Buk fled in a column, which could not be held up against all other alleged evidence of its flight (ie. the Luhansk video).

Of course, there was that column matching the Khmuryi tapes, the realtime Euromaydan facebook posting and the messages from politician Tymchuk and blogger Ukraine-at-war (see item 8). But this column never existed in realtime, as also the JIT assumes according to their September 2016 pressconference. (The Buk would have been escorted by a few cars).

Second, it showed coordinates exactly matching the position the Buk had on the Snizhne T0522 Buk video, a video showing the Buk allegedly at about 1 PM, 17 July, on route towards the farmland from where it would have shot down the plane. This video was published just before 20:30 local time, deleted within 1.5 hrs, but re-uploaded by Eliot Higgins, WowihaY’s Torez.info and Euromaydan.

So at about midnight knowledgde of its existence must have been fresh, as it had existed in public for only 4 hrs. But A. there was no column visible on this video, and B. it was not taken at midnight. So how could this account for a fleeing Buk? Was it pure coincidence that the position mentioned in these midnight messages, was the same as the one on that midday Buk video? And if this was the case, then where were these mysterious parts of realtime “operational information” founded on?

Third, Anton Gerashchenko claimed he had received intelligence “10 minutes ago”, suggesting up-to-date information. Actually he posted more than an hour after the InfoResistance message, which already had said the Buk column had passed the point.

Furthermore, he made it look as if there was some progress on the route. Though he mentions the same coordinates of the Snizhne Buk video, he also claims “its only 10 kilometers left to Russia”. This way the Buk column had proceeded some 10 kilometers in more than an hour between the first message with the coordinates and Gerashchenko’s info. Or was it only his conjecturing and hadn’t he received intel?

Speculating a bit, there possibly was an urgent need felt by Ukrainian officials to move the Buk over the Ukrainian border in no-time. Hence, it was driving on the shortest route possible, at about 20 km. from a safe haven in Russia. The info with which it was done contradicted the story the Ukrainians put out later on, see points 6 and 7 below.

Notwithstanding this conclusion, both InfoResistance and Gerashchenko pretended as if they received first hand intelligence. In reality it seems the parts were from existing (dis)information available, somehow put together to disseminate a story a Buk was fleeing to the Russian border by the T0522 and Marinovka.

Tymchuk murdered? (update)

Ultranationalist politician Dmitry Tymchuk, founder of InfoResistance and conveyer of a lot of disinformation about the MH17 case, was found dead at his home in Kiev on 18 June 2019. It is unknown if he shot himself or was murdered. See here.

After the demise of captain Voloshin – in many stories about the disaster accountable for shooting MH17 from his SU25 – it’s another mysterious death in this case.

More, see: Dating the Snizhne Buk video – and showing a broken trail

 

6. Publication of the disinformation regarding the narrative of the fleeing Buk at Krasnodon near the Russian border  “missing one missile” (18, 19 July), to sustain a story the Buk was brought back into Russia immediately after the shot down (see also 7.).

The site where the video was taken appeared to be Luhansk and the date of the video is very uncertain, to say the least, and cannot be dated on the 18th at this moment.

– JIT animation. Buk “missing one missile” driving on the low-loader again to be brought to the Russian border. This way it could account for the Luhansk video. Initially the Luhansk video was said to depict a drive-by in Krasnodon, which is much closer to the Russian border.

 

Andrey Lysenko, National Security Advisor, held a presser on 17 July at 17:00 local time, starting less than 40 minutes after the plane crashed. At the presser he stated the Ukrainians were aware the rebels had possession of a Buk complex. Apparently he did not know about the crash at this moment yet, as he didn’t mention this hot news, but conveyed an important lead of an already existing video of a Buk transport near Luhansk. See discussion here

When the video of a fleeing buk “missing one missile” near Luhansk was published, it was said it was taken in the early morning of the 18th. However, “the other video”, the one Lysenko apparently was talking about, was not made public. Of course, this raised the question if the Luhansk Buk video had already been in the possession of the Ukrainians and therefore could not account for the fleeing Buk in the morning of the 18th.

More, see section I, the Luhansk video in: Problems of the track-a-trail narrative -a review

 

7. The disinformation issued at a 19.7 presser by counter-intel chief Nayda (see from min. 4:15) showing their own Buk 312 as an example of the Russian Buk that was responsible for downing MH17 (19 July).

At a pressconference counter-intel chief Viktor Nayda showed two photos of what he claimed was the Russian Buk that was reponsible for the downing of flight MH17 (see pictures above).

The image on the left showed a Buk near Luhansk (and not near Krasnodon as Minister for the Interior Arsen Avakaov had asserted at first); The image on the right showed Ukrainian armed forces’ own Buk 312, a Buk from the 3rd battalion of the 156th regiment. This battalion operated mostly north from the conflict zone.

Interestingly, also this Ukrainian Buk was hauled by a civilian truck with a white cabin. See here for a video in which the Nayda transport features.

More, see: Problems of the track-a-trail narrative – a review

 

8. Publication of a still from a video of a Buk transport in Zuhres and 2 stills of vehicles  of the Vostok convoy to suggest the Buk was moved within a large “terrorist” convoy (by blogger U@w, politician Dmitry Tymchuk, 17 July, InfoResistance 18 July (deleted) and SBU/Nayda 19 July)

In reality the actual convoy, Vostok, never drove with a Buk, as can be seen on various videos of the 17th. Also, some of the Vostok vehicles mentioned in the sightings were not seen on the road that day, as the videos of the convoy testify as well.

Blogger Ukraine@war, politician Dmytri Tymchuk and the SBU peddled a story of the large terrorist Buk convoy, showing a still from a video of the Buk that was made from an appartment in Zuhres and two stills of vehicles of battalion “Vostok” at the same site (ie. a tank – bottom left – and an Armed Personnel Carrier with separatist fighters – on the right).

This narrative matched information coming from the socalled Khmuryi/Motel taps (see item 4. in this list), in which second in command of the DPR forces, Sergey Dubinski (nickname Khmuryi), would allegedly have ordered the Buk to go with the Vostok column on the morning of July 17th.

More, see: The 17 July sightings: Planting evidence in advance?

 

9. Publication of the fake (misdated and mistimed) “Birdie comes to you taps“, to support the fatal mistake narrative, leaving a Buk crew only an incredible 60 seconds to go through command structure and launch sequence based on ambiguous information from an very incompetent spotter who couldn’t even discern a freighter plane flying at 5 km height with a speed of 450 km/h from a civil aircraft flying at 10 km height with a speed of over 900 km/h (25 July);

After their 28.9.2016 presser the JIT published some animations. In one of them, showing “the weapon”,  it was said:

 “It takes a few minutes to prepare the TELAR for launch a missile. A number of deliberate actions have to be performed, including unlocking the missile” . – JIT Animation “The Weapon”, 1:22.

Of course, this puts even more pressure on the story of the incredible fast launch.

Two minutes also do not fit Bellingcat speculations (update)

Even Bellingcat had its doubts. In a report issued on June 19th, 2019, in which the collective was trying to glue the SBU “Birdie comes to you tapes” to MH17, their attempt to speculate their way through stumbles upon the short time lapse (see below).

However, their conclusion was not surprising. The narrative must be saved, so the SBU only had made a tiny mistake in their timing, a mistake repeated several times with capitals, underscores and exclamation marks.

 

See more: Writing a crime play (and showing the SBU taps are frauds)

 

10. Publication of the Paris Match stills with wrong location and time (published 25 July). Why was conveyed wrong information to Paris Match? Didn’t the “freelance photographer” realize s/he actually was in Donetsk on the 17th?

See more: Haunt the Buk – Paris Match images decisively debunked

The strange sourcing of the Paris Match images (update)

The story about the visual stuff that Paris Match published is very remarkable. In the first instance, the source would be a photographer who wanted to remain anonymous. The story was that he / she had made a PHOTO in Snizhne (see conversations below in which Belingcat’s Daniel Romein and Aric Toler perform):

After the JIT press conference of September 28, 2016, the story was that the freelance photographer/journalist (was actually no longer mentioned as such, but designation had not been changed) had shot a handycam video.

So Toler and Romein were fooled twice. They did not really know the source of the images and they hadn’t known there was an entire video, as they keep on mentioning there was a “photographer” who had made “snaps”. After the presser Toler managed to gloat about the report by Micha Kobs, published on this blogsite, because Kobs had shown the stills were fake. But now it appeared to be a video. As if this video was not comprised of a series of seperate images.

 

On 1 July 2017, Dutch news program Nieuwsuur broadcasted an interview (see from min. 11:00 here) with the French photographer Capucine Granier-Deferre. This showed that this photographer only HAD SEEN the recordings on 17 July – and probably received the stills later.

According to the voice-over: “The video maker doesn’t know what he just has seen and walks into the Ramada Hotel“. There he found the small group of French journalists: Alfred de Montesquoi, Jerome Sessini and Capucine Granier-Deferre.

Deferre: “I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. He showed it and said: Look, there are huge rockets there. We were about to leave so I didn’t do anything with it. “

This story is consistent with the earlier incorrect indication of place and time. Deferre was contacted by an unknown source, possibly the SBU, when she was at Hotel Ramada’s in Donetsk (the source apparently knew where he could find a group of western journalists). He showed her the cropped stills and provided a story (“Something with large missiles on its way to Snizhne”). She later passes on the images and the wrong location, Snizhne.

So I wondered earlier how it could happen that a journalist would not have known where he / she was at the time of recording. That question has now been answered. The photographer never took the shot herself, but was ‘fed’ with it.

In the interview she gets all room for correcting the mistakes made at first. Deferre’s testimony reads as if she utters a list of official statements:

“This was on the morning of the 17th. The video was filmed in Donetsk. But on that moment I didn’t give it any attention. The photo in Paris Match was a still from this video on which one could see the Buk-missiles in the morning of the 17th in Donetsk.”

Citizen investigator Arnold Greidanus tried to fill in the blanks: the provider must have been their driver! While there is absolutely no indication to conclude this, it would also be a really strange coincidence that it was the driver of western journalists who made this important visual evidence of the Buk in Donetsk.

It probably was someone who was surveilling the white truck with the red lowloader – as he clearly tries to get his camera ready for passing by. This way we must assume he drove by for the 2nd time or with foreknowledge, as he obviously had to know where the truck stayed to capture it on time.

And he also knew where to “sell” his story of a vehicle with large missiles going to Snizhne. We should remember, at about 10-11 AM this was information about an event that had not happened yet – as the Buk entered Snizhne, according to the rest of the track-a-trail story, at about 1 PM! How did he know it went to Snizhne? Educated guess?

And why was this an important vehicle? There were earlier reports about airdefense systems moved through Donetsk, like the Strela-10 that Vostok showed around at July 10th. Images of this were not shown to western journalists…

Not only the source, but also place and time were features that were changed. First blogger Ukraine@war was called in to revise the site from Snizhne to Donetsk (he sent someone with a car on the road and he found the exact spot). So that was taken care of very quickly.

However, time of capture was still a big issue. The “photo” was taken on 10 AM,  Paris Match said. Bellingcat first claimed 9 AM (8.9.2014), followed by 11 AM (8.11.2014) and then revised it finally to 10:45 AM (16.7.2015).  Micha Kobs calculated convincingly to 11:05.

Eventually, timing of the video was mentioned in the name of its file: 10:23 AM. This did not match with the shadow casting analysis Kobs had done.

 

 

11. Peddling of a story the Buk transport was led by a demand for secrecy directive to give an explanation for the almost total absence of Buk sightings and footage, though it allegedly went through densely populated area in broad daylight.

By the way, a few weeks before not one Russian/pro-separatist outlet had shown any anxiety in publishing news about an alleged seized Buk from a raided Ukrainian airforce base.

The JIT also showed footage of a Buk transport through Torez on their 28.9.2016 presser. In the video a loud siren was heared. In reality this sound would not sustain the secrecy of the transport.

The strange validation of the witness account of the AP journalist (update)

One and a half hour after the crash the Daily Mail issued a statement that an AP reporter had seen the Buk in Snizhne city:

“An Associated Press reporter on Thursday saw seven rebel-owned tanks parked at a gas station outside the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne. In the town, he also observed a Buk missile system, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 22,000 meters (72,000 feet).”

This story was followed up in an article written by AP reporter Peter Leonard on July the 25th, who talked with the reporters (there were two now):

“The vehicles stopped in front of journalists from The Associated Press. A man wearing unfamiliar fatigues, speaking with a distinctive Russian accent, checked to make sure they weren’t filming. The convoy then moved on, destination unknown in the heart of eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russia rebellion.”

There were two AP reporters present in the area that day, as photos from the AP databank testify: Mstyslav Chernov and Dmytri Lovetsky. Lovetsky had photographed the four tanks of the Oplot convoy at the Lexus gasstation in Snizhne around 2 PM. The witness mentioned could well be him, though his identity remained a secret.

Then in 2016 a mysterious tweet was posted by Vasily Maximov, a well known photo journalist operating in war zones:

Встретил вчера в Байконуре фотографа из рос"сми", который видел лично тот самый Бук под Снежным, в тот самый день. Но он публично не скажет(

— VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) July 9, 2016

“Yesterday in Baikonur I met a photographer from Russian “media”, who personally saw the Buk in Snizhne, on that very day. But he won’t say publicly(“

 

So, according to Maximov he had spoken with the American Press Buk witness in Snizhne, the famous one seeing a Buk around midday and was forced not to take pictures by a crew with “strange uniforms and Russian accents”.

Citizen investigator Arnold Greidanus and I responded with names, which prompted Maximov to hang on to a role in which he acted someone who wanted to keep things secret (after he just had spilled the beans).

Nevertheless, Maximov agreed to get engaged in Direct Message. In our conversation about the matter he confirmed the witness had been Lovetsky and that the latter had told him about the event when they were chatting in a bar (according to Lovetsky’s Facebook account, he indeed stayed in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, at the time of Maximov’s revelation).

Though Maximov would try to get more answers on questions I had for Lovetsky, they never came. Maximov had to, as he said, search for a translator, but that only seemed a tactic for discouragement. In the end all I had received was confirmation of a name that was already pretty certain anyway.

What to make of this?  Maximov spilling the beans, then peddling back, but still willing to start a private conversation in which he is ratting out his friend? Not very likely. One could only speculate about the backgrounds of this strange information relay…

 

12. In the first days the Ukrainian/western story about separatist/Russian guilt was mainly built on the assumption that rebels were in possession of a Buk, because they had seized it from Ukrainian airforce base A-1402 after it was raided. A posting on a DPR twitter account of a photo of a Buk, actually made in 2011 as later came out, should bolster this narrative.

Also a photo of a conscript of the Ukrainian army posing with a Buk went viral to account for separatist guilt. Problem of this story was the Russians could not be accused directly, as rebels had had their own way of acquiring a Buk.

Photo of ATO conscript Sergey Paschenko in front of CP100, TELAR 121 and probably TELAR 122 of the 1st battalion of the 156th regiment. This photo was aired as proof for separatist possession of Buk units.

 

Because separatists nor Russian could be deemed to profit from the downing of MH17, discussing motive also was a problem. On August the 7th, 2014, the SBU said to have found one. Motive had been a false flag operation that had gone wrong, resulting in shooting down the wrong plane. The blame shifted to the Russians.

Though former head of the SBU Nalyvaichenko still holds on to this story and it is also still around on the SBU website, after November 2014 a third story surfaced. It was also a story that could blame Russia directly, but in a far more credible way than the SBU tale of a Russian conspiracy.

Bellingcat took the forefront. On September the 8th and November the 8th they published two reports about “Origin of the separatist Buk“, purportedly showing the Buk was delivered by the Russian Kursk convoy, that had toured around near the Ukrainian border in the end of June. From this moment on the story of the Buk seized on an airforce base slided into oblivion as did the pretty unbelievable SBU concoction.

By the way, there were disseminated two stories more. The first one – disseminated by blogger Ukraine@war – considered an immediate attack from over the Russian border, near Kuybushevo, by a Russian Buk unit. Then Vasily Vovk, part of the Ukrainian respresentation in the JIT team, proposed the Buk came from the Crimea, after this area had joined Russia and so the Ukrainian Buks overthere were captured too.

Did Vovk react prematurely with a tapped conversation in mind? (update)

To indict commander op de DPR troops Igor Strelkov Girkin for assisting in bringing down MH17 by ordering a Buk, the JIT showed a video of a conversation on their 19 June 2019 presser .

In this video Girkin confirms general information about the dire position of the DPR in the war, asserting that he needs a lot of equipment from the Russians to maintain their position. The man his was talking to, was Sergey Aksyonov, acting president of the Crimea after it became Russian.

Though the conversations don’t show anything solid – see my blog (in Dutch) about the presser here – the suggestion is layed down there is an appointment between the two that heavy anti-aircraft machines (read: Buk) are on their way.

So maybe this was the information from which Vovk concluded that a story about the Buk that came from the Crimea, would be pretty plausible. Actually, this story was never heard of again, as the JIT went through with the Kursk Buk narrative.

Eventually in 2018 the Nalyvaichenko and Vovk stories were even officially denounced to protect this narrative:

“The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) wishes to stress that Mr Vovk and Mr Nalyvaichenko left the SBU in 2015. It is clear from that moment on, they did not have any access to the MH17 investigative results. In fact, even when they were still employed by the SBU, they were never involved in the process of gathering evidence and analysing that evidence, nor in the position to advise or decide on whether any person has the status of suspect.”

 

Conclusion

The propaganda goes that Russia is trying to tarnish the truth by disseminating a lot of disinformation, false possibilities and scenarios. In this respect we are able to count five scenarios as plugged by Ukrainian channels and high-ranked officials.

Remarkably, whenever the pro-Ukrainian side proposes a story of events, it is always accompanied with the assurance its the truth and nothing but the truth. When sources with another point of view issue their visions, they will be labeled as conspiracists, following a strategy of casting doubts to create a world in which truth no longer exists.

Usefullness is obvious. If you identify yourself with Truth, everyone with a different opinion can be cast aside as a liar.

This way the basic premisse – the separatists and their Russian guardians drove a Buk around the Donbass to shoot down MH17 – was sanctified from the first hours after the crash, no matter what story was devised to back it up. It was embraced as a Dogma, as persistent as Divine Truth itself. Therefore all kinds of stories, “evidence”, insinuations and accusations were pushed to keep other conceivable scenarios out of the way.

Finally, we are able to conclude the Ukrainian side and their helpers did a lot to disseminate disinformation to keep their dogma going. So what is your opinion about the relation between issuing disinformation and guilt now?

Updated with more information at 26.11.2016 and 5.7.2019