“A fresh victory for the Donetsk rebels:"

-from Life News

7-15-2019      The wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was still smoldering in the countryside of eastern Ukraine, the remains of the 298 people aboard strewn across several kilometers of rolling fields of wheat and sunflowers, when Russian media began relaying news of a downed plane in the area.

  “A fresh victory for the Donetsk rebels:  another Ukrainian plane was shot down in the city of Torez,” the anchorwoman for the Kremlin-loyal network LifeNews told viewers, referring to Russia-backed separatists fighting Kyiv’s forces in the region known as the Donbas.  The shoot-down led the network’s news segment on the evening of July 17, 2014, as the anchorwoman gave details of the separatists’ putative triumph.

  “The rebels say they were able to shoot down another transport plane of the Ukrainian Air Force,” she said.  “This occurred above the city of Torez in the self-declared Donetsk Republic. It all happened at around 5 p.m. Moscow time.  A Ukrainian An-26 was flying and suddenly it was struck by a missile, an explosion was heard, and the plane began to fall.”

  https://www.rferl.org/a/when-russia-backed-forces-boasted-they-shot-down-a-ukrainian-military-plane-that-was-actually-mh17/30056279.html

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July 16, 2019  KYIV -- Visible over the wheat stalks, a small sedan was barreling down the bumpy road toward us.  I remember the face of my journalist colleague, Roland Oliphant of The Telegraph newspaper, going serious and him saying something like "These look like soldiers."

I responded with something along the lines of "Let's get our story straight."

  When the beat-up vehicle came to a screeching halt beside us three or four armed men in camouflage fatigues -- fighters with the Russia-backed forces holding part of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine -- stepped out.

As if the maneuver had been practiced a thousand times before, they simultaneously lit cigarettes, thrust their Kalashnikov rifles over their shoulders and shouted a command I had become so accustomed to hearing while covering the war in the Donbas that it had even infiltrated my dreams: "Documents!"

  It was July 21, 2014, and we were on the outskirts of Snizhne, a small city 20 kilometers from the Russian border, on a hunt that Roland likened to searching for a needle in a wheat field.  But that might make it sound easier than it was -- and certainly safer.  We were actually searching for a missile launcher, or traces of one, in a wheat field surrounded by scores of other wheat fields in the heart of an intensifying war zone crawling with trigger-happy fighters who were no fans of nosy foreign journalists.     https://www.rferl.org/a/how-a-hunch-a-farmer-and-a-scorched-field-led-me-to-the-mh17-missile-launch-site/30058694.html

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