Mh17: The 53Rd Brigade - Betrayed By Social Media

[ichkeria]

... and exposed by ordinary British citizens.
I wonder if it will be possible for future assassins to cover their tracks in the light of this. Or is the 'belling' cat out of the bag?

And how long will the relatives have to wait for the named suspects to be interviewed?

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/02/23/53rd-report-en/

[Gromit]

Bellingcat was started by using kickstarter fundraising in 2014.

Unfortunately some of its citizen journalism has proven to be far from accurate. Their reporting on MH17 was extensively debunked before:
// 18 Jul 2014, Bellingcat "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17" - though the photograph, widely claimed to have been taken in the town of Snizhne, was actually taken in the town of Torez and under weather conditions significantly different to those on the day of the MH17 crash. Eliot Higgins (proprietor of Bellingcat: known for investigative social media and weapons analysis) didn't consider when the photograph was taken to be important. The photo used by Bellingcat in the "investigation" as to the location of the BUK was uploaded on 18 July 2014 at 18:26:41. This "investigation" as to the location of the BUK" is an unusual way to go about things. Why not simply ask the person who took it or whoever supplied it? And why not ask when it was taken?
2014 Jul 18, 8:36 PM: Within a minute or so of Brown Moses tweeting that the Buk had been geolocated to Torez, James Miller (managing editor of Interpretermag) commented: "cool. Where? James Miller, coincidentally, had been asked to geolocate the image (which appears to have originated from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry) only the day before.
Mystery MH17 Buks that did NOT get geolocated by Bellingcat
Ukrainian Forces BUK column
Still from a video taken in March 2014, when Ukrainian media reported the country’s military was concentrating air defenses closer to the Russian border to repel an “invasion”. Includes Kiev air-defense system no. 312.

Sergey Paschenko
Captioned by The Daily Mail as: "Is this the smoking gun? This picture has emerged of a pro-Russian rebel posing in front of the same type of BUK missile launcher that is believed to have shot down MH17" Though, actually, it is a Ukrainian Army conscript guarding Ukrainian Army Buks.

Sergey Paschenko selfie.jpg
Buks on Ukraine Military TV
Broadcast the evening prior to MH 17: a Buk-system in training/preparation - complete with radar.

Buks on Ukrainian Military-TV
321 at night
On July 19 Kiev’s Security Service (SBU) published photos online it claimed showed ‘Russia’ secretly withdrawing a BUK-M (NATO designation SA-11) surface-to-air missile system from the Ukraine civil war zone. Shortly after publishing this article, the photo in question was deleted. The photo was actually a still from video of a Kiev air-defense system no. 312, filmed in March this year at Yasinovataya, north of Donetsk. Buk #312 is mounted on a civilian transporter.

Ukrainian Forces BUK #312 at night
Torez BUK article conclusions
With the Kiev government having 27 BUK systems and the dissidents having (allegedly) one Russian-supplied and crewed system, it is statistically more likely to have been a Kiev BUK fired at MH17, especially considering Ukraine Air Defense expertise.
Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 (a commercial flight) was shot down by the Ukrainian military over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001. Ukraine banned the testing of Buk, S-300 and similar missile systems for a period of 7 years following this incident. Ukraine’s acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh described the combat readiness of the country’s armed forces as “unsatisfactory” in his 12 March 2014 report to the acting president. Tenyukh said recent exercises demonstrated a “dismal degree of preparedness among servicemen and lack of military specialists, equipment and weapons” in the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the Navy. The country’s air defense troops had received little training because of the 2001 ban on missile launches imposed after the crash of a Russian Tu-154 passenger jet. The ban was lifted in 2008, but so far only 10 percent of Air Defense Forces servicemen “have mastered the required level of theory and practice,” the report said. //

[Gromit]

Continues...

// The Ukrainian military had several batteries of Buk surface-to-air missile systems with at least 27 launchers, capable of bringing down high-flying jets, in the Donetsk region where the Malaysian passenger plane crashed, Russian Defense Ministry said .
The only thing that the Bellingcat investigation shows is that a particular photograph they were supplied with is of an area in Torez. Without knowing when this photo was taken, it proves nothing about Bellingcat's claim that it "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17". Bellingcat accepted, without question, the line it was fed from Kiev that it was taken on the morning of 17 July. Bellingcat did not consider any other possible sightings of BUKs in the area. It is a straightforward case of cherry-picking "One Photograph" (Bellingcat's own words) to justify a story. //

[ichkeria]

Try reading the evidence Gromit of a 115 page report, rather than cherry picking individual items from the past when inevitably there as a lot of confusion and counter claim.

Anyway my point is really in these days of social media, can anyone really be sure of covering their tracks?
Admittedly the 53rd brigade presumably did not set out to down a civilian airliner, although the fact they were deploying a Buk missile system into s foreign country might have been reason enough to be more discreet

The facts on the ground are there if only there are people willing to piece it all together. Someone one a bus for example calmly filmed a long convoy of Russian troops rolling through their town ...

[ichkeria]

Their report has been sent, with the actual names included, to the Dutch authorities. Who will assess it as they see fit, no doubt.

[Orderlimit]

We should send an answerbank report on the matter when this thread is concluded.