A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying on flight MH17 from Amsterdam, the Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in eastern Ukraine. On board the ship were 298 people (including 15 crew members), including 85 children. Citizens of 10 countries were killed, including 43 citizens of Malaysia. Most of the dead - 193 people - were citizens of the Netherlands.

The plane, following the established international transit corridor, passed Donetsk, and further to the north for 14 kilometers and began a maneuver to return within the established air corridor. The crew did not have time to complete the maneuver that had begun, at 17.20 Moscow time at an altitude of 10 thousand meters the plane began to lose speed sharply and disappeared from the radar screens at 17.23 Moscow time. The wreckage of the liner was in the area locality Hrabovo near the city of Torez, Donetsk region, in the territory controlled by the militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people's republic(DNR).

On the evening of July 17, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, an adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Anton Gerashchenko, announced that the plane was shot down from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system (SAM). Kyiv in the crash of the militia liner, which, according to the West, is supported by Russia. The militias said they did not have the means to shoot down an aircraft at that height.

In mid-September 2015, the Prosecutor General's Office of the self-proclaimed DPR crashed a Malaysian plane, which found locals. She turned to the Prosecutor General of the Netherlands with a request to take away the debris collected in the Donbass. On September 28, Dutch experts, together with the OSCE mission, visited the village of Grabovo, Donetsk region. They talked to local authorities and also surveyed the territory.

Dutch Safety Council October 13, 2015 plane crash. The report noted that the crash of the airliner was caused by an explosion off the port side of a 9N314M type warhead mounted on a 9M38 series missile fired from the Buk system. However, a document stating from which territory the aircraft was shot down and who is to blame. The chairman of the Dutch Security Council said that further investigation would be required to determine the exact location of the missile launch on the Malaysian airliner.

The Russian concern Almaz-Antey (manufacturer of the Buk anti-aircraft missile system), in turn, reported on its study of the MH17 crash. According to his data, Boeing, launched from the area of ​​​​the settlement Zaroshchenskoe, which was controlled by the Ukrainian security forces. It was this area that the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation mentioned a few days after the tragedy.

In January 2016, after Russian experts studied the final report of the Netherlands, Deputy Head of the Federal Air Transport Agency Oleg Storchevoi sent a letter to the Dutch Security Council, in which he indicated that studies and field experiments conducted by Russian specialists indicate that the conclusions of the Dutch side are unreliable.

In June 2016, a joint international team of investigators investigating the crash of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, in which they recognized the difficulties associated with the lack of experience in investigating disasters of this magnitude and knowledge of special terms.

In the summer of 2016, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, together with the National Prosecutor's Office of the Netherlands, as part of the investigation of the crash, requested the competent Russian departments, including the Almaz-Antey concern, to provide materials that could contribute to the investigation. In particular, the Netherlands also requested raw raw radar images of the Ukrainian airspace Lugansk-Donetsk region for the period when the liner crashed.

In July 2017, members of an international investigation team that the trial of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing will be held in the Netherlands. In the same month, Ukraine signed an agreement on international legal cooperation with the Netherlands, which gives the Dutch side the right to hold a trial in the plane crash case. The signed document provides that the Netherlands has the competence to prosecute persons for crimes related to the crash of the Malaysian Boeing, as well as

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption According to Dutch investigators, a Buk missile exploded to the left of the Boeing cockpit.

More than two years have passed since the crash of the Malaysian Boeing in the sky over Ukraine. During this time, the Russian media have repeatedly questioned the results of an official investigation into the causes of the tragedy that claimed the lives of 298 people. The BBC monitoring service followed how the versions of the catastrophe changed in the interpretation of the pro-Kremlin media.

Spanish dispatcher

July 17, 2014 at 19:00 Moscow time news channel LifeNews informed about "a new victory for the Donetsk militia", who allegedly managed to knock out another An-26 transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force. This time - near the city of Torez.

"It all happened at about five o'clock in the evening Moscow time. An-26 flew over the city, suddenly a rocket crashed into it, an explosion was heard, the plane began to fall," the presenter noted, commenting on an amateur video from the scene. The news was immediately picked up by many news sites and the Russia 24 TV channel.

However, less than an hour later, it turned out that the footage shown on Russian TV channels was not an An-26 at all, but a Malaysian Boeing flying to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam.

In the first hours after confirmation of information about the downed passenger liner in the skies over Ukraine, the Russian media rejected the possibility that the Donetsk separatists were involved in the disaster.

"Specialists assure that it is impossible to shoot down the liner with the means at the disposal of the rebels," the correspondent of the Vremya program on Channel One reported.

"The plane crashed near the village of Grabovo, which is not far from the village of Snezhnoye, which was bombed the day before yesterday, the Ukrainian Air Force intensively bombed," the journalist of the Rossiya TV channel noted.

In parallel with this, alternative theories, including conspiracy theories, began to actively spread in the media. Late on the evening of July 17, the Russian-language website of the RT television channel published a tweet from a "Spanish dispatcher" in Kyiv that Ukrainian military aircraft were seen near him a few minutes before the Boeing crash.

The message was soon picked up by the Rossiya-24 TV channel, as well as a number of online publications. Soon the Twitter account of the "dispatcher" was recognized as a fake and blocked.

Putin's plane

Another version, widely circulated in the Russian media on the evening of the same day, was the theory that the likely target of those who shot down the Boeing was probably the aircraft number one of the Russian president, returning from a Latin American tour.

"The contours of the aircraft are generally similar, the linear dimensions are also very similar, and as for the coloring, it is almost identical at a fairly distant distance," Interfax quoted a source in the Federal Air Transport Agency as saying.

The next day, as allegations against the Kremlin made headlines around the world, Russian state television channels continued to blame Ukraine.

"Formally, the Malaysian liner was shot down in a peaceful sky. Despite the fact that the Ukrainian authorities declared the space over the southeast to be no-fly as early as July 8, transit echelons continued to work," the Vesti correspondent noted.

At the same time, a new conspiracy theory appeared on the Internet: the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported, citing "eyewitnesses" and one of the then separatist leaders Igor Strelkov, that perhaps some Boeing passengers were dead before the crash.

Nevertheless, a few days later, this version, as well as rumors about an attempt to shoot down "aircraft number one," faded into the background, giving way to official statements by the Russian Defense Ministry.

Disappearing "Buk"

On July 20, US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking on CNN, accused Russia of supplying large quantities of weapons to separatists in eastern Ukraine.

On July 21, Russian state television channels said that, according to Russian military data, a group of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft systems appeared in the Donetsk region on the eve of the tragedy and disappeared shortly after.

"In addition, at the time of the crash, there was another object on the same echelon with the liner - the Ukrainian Su-25," the Vesti host noted, referring to data from the Ministry of Defense.

At the end of May 2015, the international independent group Bellingcat stated that the images of the Ukrainian Buk complex, allegedly recording its movement on July 14 and 17, 2014, are fake.

On July 25, 2014, the version about the Ukrainian Buk was again heard from TV screens. This time, the NTV channel, referring to the opinion of an expert, stated that the Boeing-777 could have been shot down during the exercises of the Ukrainian air defense forces.

On September 9, the Dutch security service released a preliminary report on the causes of the downing of flight MH17. His main conclusion - "Boeing" fell apart in the air as a result of external influences.

On the same day, a correspondent for the Rossiya TV channel criticized the opinion of experts, again recalling that the Ukrainian military supposedly had Buks at their disposal. "This photo shows a missile system with a turned launcher. On July 17, it suddenly disappeared somewhere," he said.

"Specialists are sure that the experts missed the time when a full-fledged and objective investigation could be carried out. The Ukrainian side, as if on purpose, did everything possible so that it was no longer possible to find out the real cause of the disaster," the correspondent concluded.

sensational shot

Nevertheless, in November of the same year, the version about the Ukrainian "Buk" was suddenly replaced by a new one - about an air-to-air missile.

The host of the Odnako program, Mikhail Leontiev, said that "Channel One had at its disposal a sensational photograph, allegedly taken by a foreign spy satellite in the last seconds of the flight of a Malaysian Boeing over Ukraine." In the photograph, the presenter noted, "the launch of a missile from under the left wing" of the MiG-29 fighter "is clearly visible at the cockpit."

"In short, there was most likely no Buk," he concluded.

The release of the program "However" went on air on Channel One on November 14 - a few days before the G20 summit in Australia. According to Leontiev himself, "on the eve of the most important meeting of world leaders ... the topic of investigating the death of passengers on that flight is more than relevant," and the sensational shot "speaks in favor of the version that was almost never heard in the West."

In the evening of the same day, a similar story with "photo evidence" of the destruction of the aircraft by a fighter appeared on the air of the Rossiya TV channel. On the same day, popular Russian photoblogger Ilya Varlamov discovered signs of satellite footage being faked.

secret witness

After the public exposure of the fake photo, the version of the fighter again began to be actively discussed in the Russian media at the end of 2014.

This time the reason was an article in the newspaper " TVNZ" dated December 22. According to the publication, journalists "found a witness who claims that the Malaysian Boeing was shot down by a Ukrainian Su-25 attack aircraft.

"A secret witness appeared in the case of the Malaysian Boeing, whose testimony removes all charges from the militia and Russia," the authors of the article concluded. Soon this story was picked up by online publications, major TV channels and even the Investigative Committee of Russia. However, the story didn't end there.

In early June 2015, the "secret witness" reappeared in the headlines of the state media. "The investigation into the case of the crash of the Boeing in the Donetsk region is moving forward noticeably. And today the name of the main witness was named in the Investigative Committee of Russia," Channel One reported on June 3. According to journalists, it turned out to be a former Ukrainian soldier Evgeny Agapov.

In parallel, Russian media reported on the results of an investigation conducted by the developer of the Buk anti-aircraft systems, the Almaz-Antey concern. According to the company's experts, the Malaysian Boeing was shot down over the Donbas by a 9M38M1 missile fired from the Buk-M1 complex. At the same time, representatives of the concern at a press conference did not rule out that the missile could have been fired by Ukrainian air defense.

In response, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins stated that Almaz-Antey used incorrect and edited images in his report on the MH17 crash.

special operation

According to this version, on July 17, 2014, a bomb exploded on board the Boeing. "I'm practically sure that the plane was destroyed from the inside, and it was a special operation," Sergey Sokolov, an expert at the Analytics and Security federal information center, said on the TV channel at the time.

Outdated "Buk"

On October 13, the Dutch Security Council published a final report on the results of an investigation into the causes of the crash, which stated that the airliner was shot down by a missile launched from a Russian-made Buk.

May 2018, Lugansk region, border area between the DPR and LPR.

Next to our house is a playground where a girl plays, and a plump woman sits next to her, her mother. The site was built by Yevgeny, and the stout woman is the wife of the man who once betrayed Yevgeny to the police. Allegedly, he sheltered the pilot of a downed Ukrainian fighter jet.

Yevgeny was kept in the torture chamber for several days. He does not say what was done to him, but on his head there is a web of poorly healed scars on a damaged skull, and when he was finally taken to the hospital, his relatives at first could not even recognize him because of his completely broken face.

The neighbor who betrayed Evgeny lives three houses away from him. Everyone in the village knows that in fact there was no Ukrainian paratrooper and that it was all about the field near the river, because of which the men argued. The neighbor denies this, but his handwritten testimonies were shown to Yevgeny by the separatists during the torture.

That is life.

Context

News: Flight MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian missile

EU calls on Russia to plead guilty in MH17 case

It's time to reveal the truth about MH17

MH17: mirror of Russian terror

We are standing with Yevgeny, leaning on his car, in a picturesque forest, smoking and looking at the first villages of the Luhansk People's Republic in the distance.

— Eugene, do you know what can happen? For this they can take away not only me, but also you and your family.

Eugene shakes off the ashes and starts the car.

- Sit down.

The accident occurred just three kilometers away. At that moment, Eugene was just repairing the riser, when smoke appeared in the sky. Eugene looked in that direction and saw a huge civilian aircraft, which no longer had wings. The plane was spinning in the air and coming straight at them. Pieces of plating and equipment fell off the hull, and the bodies of people flew with them. There was no time to run. Eugene didn't move.

Then the plane crashed. Shortly after Yevgeniy reached the crash site, the entire territory was cordoned off by the Donetsk army. Only in the evening did he learn what he had seen with his own eyes. It was a crash civil aircraft MH17, which flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 passengers on board.

Since then, there have been many legends and fictions among the locals. That summer, their region was bombarded by Ukrainian aviation, and in the minds of the people, the perpetrators of both incidents, the bombings and the crash of a civilian plane, merged into one.

According to some, a civilian Boeing MH17 shot down a Ukrainian fighter. Others are sure that the bodies on the plane were not living passengers, but corpses from morgues. Allegedly, by the time of the fall, they had already decently decomposed. Another villager said that the passports of all the victims were allegedly found on deck, prepared in advance in a safe to make it easier to identify the victims.

In fact, these people know nothing and have not seen anything. They naively repeat the disinformation that was actively spread by the Russian media at the time and which was later refuted by experts.

In the memory of people who experienced great fear in those months, air strikes on their villages merge with the event that shocked the whole world on July 17, 2014. Memories are confused with propaganda, rumors and facts. Fantastic theories are born.

Grass grows and cows graze today at the site of the crash of Boeing 777 flight MH17. We came here by forgotten field paths, which even the separatists, who still guard the main access routes to this place, do not know about. In the DPR, this field belongs to specially protected areas.

International experts have pinpointed the origin of the weapon and the method of destroying the aircraft with a Buk surface-to-air missile that belonged to the Russian armed forces. The only thing left for the Donetsk authorities now is to stubbornly insist on their propaganda and not let anyone in here who could refute it with some kind of find.

Of course, the separatists here have already carefully collected everything they could. Nearby is a monument to the victims of the plane crash. Beneath it are candles and teddy bears of children who died in the accident. The toys were collected by the residents of a nearby village before they were confiscated by soldiers. There is nothing left here anymore. Field as field.

When I returned to Donetsk a few days later, the taxi driver who drove me said that four years ago a civilian plane had crashed nearby. Haven't I heard about it? I heard.

The happy driver spoke up. When this happened, he was not far away, fulfilling the order. On the spot, he was almost simultaneously with the local police, who were already building a cordon.

He stood there with the villagers for several hours and saw everything that happened. He remembers how they called at once mobile phones victims after their loved ones around the world learned this terrible news and, in desperate hope, tried to get through to those who boarded the plane in Amsterdam.

“Did you hear the phones ringing in the body of the plane?”

"Which building?" the taxi driver laughed. “We saw with our own eyes how our countrymen stole everything they found from there: phones, tablets, money and jewelry. The ringing came from their pockets and backpacks.

The article is part of a book about Ukraine, Donbass: Wedding Room at the Voina Hotel, written by reporter Tomasz Forro.

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.