11-8-14
Inquiries by Storyful with Paris Match established that the photograph was taken at “about 11 am on the morning of July 17.” Shadows cast by the vehicle are consistent with this time of day. Paris Match also confirmed this was the best quality version of the image available. A Twitter post from 12:32PM (local time) on July 17 reports the sighting of a Buk at the intersection of Shakhtostroiteley Boulevard and Ilych Avenue heading east in the direction of Makiivka. This tweet supports the location and route provided by the Paris Match photograph. Using the phone number on the side of the low-loader truck, Paris Match contacted the owner of the company, who claimed the truck had been stolen by separatists and that the vehicle was unique in the region.
Screenshot from footage filmed in Zuhres, Ukraine, July 17, 2014.
...locals who reporting seeing a convoy of military vehicles moving eastward through Torez towards Snizhne during the early afternoon. Three tweets that describe the missile launcher and an accompanying convoy travelling through Torez were posted at 12:07pm, 12:15pm, and 12:26pm local time. Others on VKontakte report that the convoy included three tanks, with posts at 1:14PM and 2:14PM that confirm the information was posted on Twitter before the downing of MH17.
Along with these eyewitness reports, journalists have since visited the city and received confirmation of the convoy sightings on July 17. Journalists from the Guardian and Buzzfeed visited Torez on July 22nd and interviewed locals who confirmed both the time and route the Buk missile launcher took through Torez on the way to Snizhne along the H21 motorway.
-Photograph and screenshot from footage of the Buk missile launcher in Snizhne, Ukraine, July 17, 2014.
Snizhne
A photograph and video posted on Twitter and YouTube (above) showed a Buk missile launcher in the town of Snizhne. Unlike previous images and video, the Buk was not shown on a low-loader truck, but moving under its own power. The location shown in the video was precisely located and showed the Buk heading south out of Snizhne. The photograph was also located to 13a Karapetyan Street, less than 1 kilometer northwest of the location on the video. Based on the shadows in the photograph, the photograph was taken at approximately 1:30PM.
The AP reported on August 25th that “On July 17, AP reporters in the town of Snizhne saw a tracked launcher with four SA-11 surface-to-air missiles parked on a street. The bulky missile system is also known as a Buk M-1. Three hours later, people six miles (10 kilometers) west of Snizhne heard loud noises and then saw the wreckage and bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 fall from the sky.” Three hours prior to the time MH17 was downed was 1:20pm local time, supporting the time indicated by the shadows in the Snizhne photograph.
-Screenshot from footage filmed in Luhansk, Ukraine, July 17, 2014.
Luhansk
The final video was posted online by the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior on July 18. In this video, the Buk missile launcher is back on the low-loader truck, but is now missing at least one missile. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed in a press conference on July 21 that this video was in fact filmed in Ukrainian government-controlled territory, stating that the “media circulated a video supposedly showing a Buk system being moved from Ukraine to Russia. This is clearly a fabrication. This video was made in the town of Krasnoarmeysk, as evidenced by the billboard you see in the background, advertising a car dealership at 34 Dnepropetrovsk Street. Krasnoarmeysk has been controlled by the Ukrainian military since May 11.”
-Top, text on Luhansk billboard, as cited in the Russian Ministry of Defence press conference.
Bottom, photograph of the same billboard taken by a Luhansk resident.
However, investigations by Bellingcat have shown this statement from the Russian Ministry of Defence to be untrue, and it has been possible to find the exact location in the separatist-held area of Luhansk where this video was filmed. While it is not possible to discern the exact time this video was filmed, there are three pieces of evidence that lend credence to the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior’s claim that the video was filmed on the early morning of July 18:
• The video was filmed approximately 75 kilometers north of Snizhne.
• At least one missile is missing from the set of four missiles that the Buk missile launcher is normally armed with. Additionally, the photograph of the Buk missile launcher in Torez shows four missiles, and local witnesses noted that the Buk missile launcher moving through Torez had four missiles.
• The netting visible in the photograph from Torez is absent from the top of the missiles in Luhansk.
The Low-Loader Truck
Throughout the sequence of videos and photographs showing the Buk missile launcher in eastern Ukraine, it is clear the same low-loader truck is being used, and the vehicle has been described as unique by its owner. From the available evidence, it is clear that the separatists have used the same low-loader to move military vehicles on occasions after July 17.
On August 6th 2014, a photographed was shared online showing the low-loader truck carrying a military vehicle through the town of Makiivka, just east of Donetsk. While the board with the phone number painted onto it was removed, it is still a clear match to the same vehicle used on July 17. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2014/11/08/origin-of-the-separatists-buk-a-bellingcat-investigation/
.......................................................................................................................................
2-23-16 From June 23 to 25, 2014, Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade transported several Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems to areas near the Russia-Ukraine border. Bellingcat has extensively covered this convoy of military vehicles over the past year and a half, including numerous reports on the 53rd Brigade’s most notable piece of cargo: Buk 3×2, the missile launcher that we believe downed MH17. You can trace the 53rd Brigade’s journey from its base in Kursk, Russia to near the Russia-Ukraine border on Storymap, through which you can watch the videos and photographs in which the convoy, including Buk 3×2, are captured.
There is no direct evidence indicating if it was Russian or separatist soldiers who operated Buk 3×2 when it was in Ukraine. However, considering the complexity of the Buk-M1 system, it is most likely that the Russian military did not transfer a Buk missile launcher to separatist commanders without some guidance or a Russian crew. In the likely case that the Buk 3×2 did come with a Russian crew, it is almost certain that they were from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, which was deployed at the border throughout the summer of 2014.
Bellingcat has published numerous reports indicating our confidence that the Buk-M1 system that most likely downed MH17 was the Russian Buk 3×2. In the six available photographs and videos of the Buk-M1 missile launcher in Donetsk, Zuhres, Luhansk, Torez, and Snizhne on the day of and after the airliner’s downing, numerous features on the Buk match uncommon features found on Buk 3×2. Many of these features can be seen in this comparison between Buk 3×2 (in Russia, June 2014) and the Buk seen in Donetsk, Ukraine on the day of the tragedy:
There are numerous other features on Buk 3×2 that match the Buk seen in eastern Ukraine on July 17 and 18, 2014 that indicate that it is definitely a Russian Buk, and more specifically 3×2. These features include:
-H-2200 mark on the left side (a load-bearing code used in railways, and extremely common on Russian equipment, with only a few examples of it seen on Ukrainian tanks and none on Buks)
-Crosshair symbol (gravity mark) next to H-2200, meant for stabilizing while loading onto railways
-Visible unit designation, with a likely “3”, an obscured middle digit, and fairly clear “2”
-Distinct marks on hull and side-skirt
-Side-skirt damage pattern
-Distinct white mark on right side-skirt, visible in July 18 Luhansk video and a June 23 video in Alexeyevka, Russia (see comparison here). The same white mark is visible on the other side skirt below the H-2200 mark, as seen in the above comparison video.
The third section, “Soldiers of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” details the soldiers within the 53rd Brigade and the information provided by their public postings on social media. The soldiers of the 2nd Battalion provided a wealth of information, including photographs and written notes, describing their time on the Russia-Ukraine border in June and July, 2014. More extensive details are provided regarding the soldiers who were normally responsible for the Buk missile launcher numbered 222, which was replaced by Buk 3×2, which we believe downed MH17. Additional details are provided on soldiers of the 1st and 3rd Battalions in order to demonstrate that they likely had no involvement or knowledge regarding the transfer or operation of Buk 3×2 in Ukraine. The identities of all of these soldiers have been anonymized in this public version of the report, with their names changed and faces blurred, though an uncensored version with their true identities has been provided to the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT).
The fourth section, “Cadets at the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” describes a summer cadet training program at the Kursk base of the 53rd Brigade. Information provided by these cadets gives us additional understanding of the structure and operations of the brigade, in addition to ruling out numerous officers from any involvement with the MH17 disaster. The identities of all cadets have been anonymized, like with the soldiers in the previous section.
The final and most important section, “Commanders of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” provides extensive information regarding the leadership structure of the brigade and battalion that provided and possibly operated the likely murder weapon in the downing of MH17. We provide partially anonymized information regarding 14 officers of the 2nd Battalion of the 53rd Brigade, including the commanders of the Buk unit vehicles within the battalion. Sergey Borisovich Muchkaev, the commander of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, is closely detailed, along with his superiors, including Aleksey Zolotov of the Air Defense of the 20th Guards Army and Andrey Kokhanov of the Air Defense of the Western Military District. Ultimately, responsibility for the downing of MH17 from a weapon provided and possibly operated by the Russian military lies with the Ministry of Defense and the Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces, President Vladimir Putin. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/02/23/53rd-report-en/
.............................................................................................................................
1-11-15
BUK photos found of 53rd Russian Air Defense brigade with number 3xx
http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/2015/01/buk-photos-found-of-russian-53-brigade.html
............................................................................................................................
4-5-16
According to a new report, the group positively identifies the middle digit of this Buk by matching seven characteristic features on Buk "3×2", including a unique dent on a side panel, the white marks on the chassis, and the cable arrangement connecting to the missile erector.
“The middle digit is a three, thus identifying the number of the Buk that downed MH17 as “332” before the middle digit was obscured. In this new investigation, members of the Bellingcat investigation team collected and analyzed dozens of photographs of Buk TELARs that have been posted online by members of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade since 2010,” – the report says.
“The full report gives details on the process in determining that these three TELARs were the only possible candidates for identification. After comparing the seven unique features, Buk 332 was the only TELAR that had even one of these features in common with Buk 3×2 from materials recorded in Russia in June 2014 and eastern Ukraine on July 17 and 18, 2014. The seven examined features were: side skirt profile, wheel type (combination of hollow wheels and spoke wheels), dent in the left side panel, arrangement of cable connections to the missile erector, white mark on both side skirts, font and exact spacing of digits, and the shape and size of oil/soot deposits by exhaust,” – the team’s report said.
https://joinfo.com/world/1016290_bellingcat-russian-brigade-operates-buk-that-downed-mh17.html
No comments:
Post a Comment