Bellingcat experts to publish new report on MH17 crash late on Tuesday
British investigative journalists group Bellingcat will publish on Tuesday evening a new report on the investigation into the crash of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing MH17 in Donetsk region in the summer of 2014.
"Bellingcat's new #MH17 report will be released at 10pm BST today (midnight, Kyiv time)," the organization wrote on its Twitter page.
The group's expert, Aric Toler, said on the air of the Espreso.TV that their researchers were able to establish the number of the Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which was used to shoot the Boeing 777 in Donbas in 2014, and which was assigned to the 53rd brigade of the air defense troops Russia's armed forces.
The expert said that the anti-aircraft missile system number was Buk-332.
As reported, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board. Most of the victims were Dutch and Malaysian nationals. The casualties also included citizens of Australia, Indonesia, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand.
The Dutch Safety Board published a report on the MH17 crash on October 13, 2015. It says, in particular, that the airliner was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile.
In early January 2016, the Bellingcat group said that a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was downed by a Buk missile launcher on July 2014 which originated from Russia.
"… it can be concluded that on July 17, 2014 a Buk missile launcher, originating from the 53rd Brigade near Kursk, Russia, travelled from Donetsk to Snizhne. It was then unloaded and drove under its own power to a field south of Snizhne, where at approximately 4:20 p.m. it launched a surface-to-air missile that hit Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew over Ukraine. On the morning of July 18, the Buk missile launcher was driven from Luhansk, Ukraine, across the border to Russia," reads the report which summarizes open source investigations into the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) on July 17, 2014 in Ukraine.
According to the report, "alternative scenarios presented by the Russian Ministry of Defense and Almaz-Antey are at best deeply flawed, and at worst show a deliberate attempt to mislead using fabricated evidence."
