AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER 3 ENGLISH SERIES
In a series of tweets made on July 17th from his now deleted Twitter account, Carlos made a number of claims, including In May, Russia Today had previously reported on Carlos, who had been commentating on the Ukraine crisis for a number of months, and claimed in his interview with Russia Today to have received death threats because of his work. It was reported that the Luhansk People’s Republic had claimed an Ukrainian SU-25 had shot down MH17 “after a ground attack aircraft was shot down by the militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic”, and rebel leader Andrei Purgin told Russia 24 News that MH17 may have been shot down after being mistaken for a Russian spy plane.Įlsewhere, the tweets of “Carlos”, who claimed to be an air traffic controller in Ukraine, were adding more details to the incident.
In the case of those sources claiming the Ukrainian air force was responsible there were a number of different claims made. On the day of July 17th it was already apparent competing claims about how MH17 was downed were being made by various sources. In this piece we’ll examine claims relating to the use of a jet fighter to shoot down MH17, which reveals not only continual inconsistencies between the various claims made by the Russian government and presented in the media, but also examples of outright and provable falsehoods being presented by the Russian government and media.Īs with any major event there are many alternative theories and claims made on various message boards, social media sites, and blogs, but for the purposes of this piece we will focus on claims that have been made by the Russian government or have made their way into mainstream discourse.
These theories can be generally split into two broad groups, one where a Buk surface to air missile system was used to shoot down MH17, the other where a Ukrainian military jet, usually specified as a SU-25, shot down MH17.īellingcat has examined much of the evidence and claims related to a Buk missile system being used, in particular tracking a Buk controlled by separatists on July 17th and finding the same Buk in Russia in late June in our report Origin of the Separatists’ Buk. While the investigations in to the downing of MH17 continue there’s been much debate about who was responsible, and the weapon system used to down MH17.