By New Cold War.org editors, Dec 27, 2014
UK journalist Graham Phillips visited the site of the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 on December 26 and has published a gallery of 38 photos of what he saw. He found the site still littered with wreckage of the plane. Other wreckage has been gathered by local residents but no one from the ‘international investigate team’ wants it.
Phillips found human remains still scattered on the ground. He also found an unexploded Ukrainian rocket protruding from the ground where it landed five months ago.
Phillips’ findings once again call into question the professionalism and intention of the selective ‘international investigation team’ that is headed by Holland. The team says it has picked up “all the wreckage it needs” to complete an investigation into the crash that took place on July 17, 2014.
That claim by the investigators would seem to be a first in aviation investigation history—spot decisions on a crash site of what does and does not constitute vital evidence. Reuters reported on Dec. 11: “Ukrainian emergency services operating under Dutch supervision picked up wreckage considered most valuable for the inquiry during a six-day operation in November.”
The Reuters report reminded readers that families in Holland of those who died in the crash are accusing the investigative team of bias and incompetence and want a body of the United Nations to take over the investigation. The Dutch government has refused that demand.
The four countries that assigned themselves to the investigation—Holland, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine—have agreed among themselves that any one of them may veto the release of any information gathered during the course of the investigation.
After much protest over the exclusion of Malyasia from the investigation, that country was recently admitted to the team.
Earlier this month, Russian blogger Anatoly Shariy published on YouTube an interview with a man claiming to be a pilot in the Ukrainian air force who says he viewed evidence that Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighter aircraft. The story was then published in the large-circulation Russian tabloid newspaper Komsololskaya Pravda.
The man says he was on duty at a Ukrainian air force base in eastern Ukraine on July 17 and he saw three Ukrainian fighter aircraft take off during the time that MH17 was crossing the dangerous air space above Donetsk region. He says two of those aircraft were shot down. The third aircraft that took off was armed with air-to-air missiles; when it returned, the missiles had been fired.
It is impossible to verify the identity of the man and whether his claim to be a Ukrainian pilot is true. His statement is, however, is consistent with the findings in a report published in August by the Russian Union of Engineers. (The report was translated into English and published in September). An analysis of the engineers’ report and conclusions as well as subsequent information was published on Nov. 4 by Renfrey Clarke, an editorial contributor to New Cold War.org.
A text of the interview by Anatoly Shariy was translated to English by the Fort Russ blog and can be read here.
