[D66] Russian media allege flight MH17 shot down by Ukrainian missile unit

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http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/26/ukra-j26.html

Russian media allege flight MH17 shot down by Ukrainian missile unit
By Peter Schwarz
26 July 2014

The Malaysian passenger plane MH17 may have been shot down July 17 by a
Ukrainian anti-aircraft unit during an exercise, according to Russia's
Ria Novosti, which cited an anonymous source in the Ukrainian security
apparatus. The new and detailed allegations in the Russian media come
amid mounting US and European Union charges that Russia is responsible
for the shooting down of the jetliner.

According to the report, the chief of the 156th Air Defence Rocket
Regiment was ordered on July 17 to provide cover for ground troops near
Donetsk. The unit was tasked with monitoring and destroying targets
“with a rocket of type Buk-M1 in training mode.”

Two SU-25 fighter jets from the airbase of the 229th Brigade of the
Kulbakino tactical force in Nikolayev reportedly served as control
targets. One of these aircraft had been recorded near Sarostschenskoje
by a Buk anti-aircraft missile system.

“The tragic accident could have led to the flight route of the Malaysian
Boeing and the SU-25, which were at different altitudes, crossing and
appearing on the radar display as one large point, which was fatal for
the civilian plane, because the targeting system would automatically
choose the larger target,” the source told Ria Novosti.

A rocket launch was reportedly not scheduled. Why a rocket was
nevertheless fired, the source could not explain. “This is the question
facing Ukrainian Security Service staff, who picked up the battery
commander and crew at about half past nine in the evening,” he said.

The Ukrainian side immediately rejected this information as false. “This
information that the Boeing was shot during an air defence exercise is
absolute nonsense,” a Ukrainian defence ministry spokesman said.

The information from the Ria Novosti source cannot be verified, just
like US government claims that pro-Russian separatists shot down the
aircraft. Washington has not provided a single piece of evidence so far
for this scenario, citing only “information from the secret services.”

The Russian defence ministry already provided precise information on
Monday, however, including about the presence of a Ukrainian SU-25
fighter jet in the vicinity of the Malaysian Boeing jet at the time of
the crash.

At the press conference, Lieutenant General Andrei Kartopolov said the
SU-25 would have been in a position to destroy the Malaysian Boeing with
a missile. He also showed satellite images of Ukrainian Buk batteries,
which were located in the vicinity of the disputed region, and of
increased electronic activity reported by radar stations at the time of
the crash, transmitting target information to the Buk batteries. The Ria
Novosti report supports this claim.

Although it remains completely unclear who shot down the Malaysian
passenger aircraft, and evidence pointing to Ukrainian involvement is
mounting, Washington, Berlin and the European Union are systematically
exploiting the air disaster to intensify their reckless offensive
against Russia.

Harsher sanctions threaten to plunge the Russian, European and world
economy into a new crisis. The dispatch of armed units into the area of
the catastrophe, as the Dutch and Australians are seeking with a UN
resolution, carries the risk of military escalation that could culminate
in a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

The Western powers are relying on an unpredictable right-wing regime in
Kiev, which regards an escalation of the war as the only way to cling to
power. This became clear on Thursday when Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk resigned from office.

Yatsenyuk resigned after several economic laws had failed to pass in
parliament. These included a law enabling the partial sale of the
country's gas transportation system to foreign investors, providing
urgently needed money for the state coffers. Beforehand, the Udar party
of the Kiev mayor and former professional boxer Vitali Klitschko, as
well as the fascist Svoboda party, left the governing coalition with
Yatsenyuk's Fatherland Party.

Yatsenyuk condemned this as a “moral and ethical crime,” with “dramatic
consequences for our country.” In an angry parliamentary speech, he
accused his former allies of “irresponsibly placing individual political
interests above the fate of the country.” The government's work would
now be blocked for months, he said. “There are no answers to questions
like: How will we pay wages tomorrow, where will the fuel for the tanks
come from, how will we finance our army?”

The real target of Yatsenyuk's angry tirade was President Petro
Poroshenko, who had obviously arranged the collapse of the coalition,
which he welcomed, in order to bring about early elections. “This proves
that at least a section of the members of parliament are not stuck to
their seats and feel obliged to face the will of the voters,” he
declared. “All opinion polls show that society wants a complete renewal
of its leadership.”

Following Yatsenyuk's resignation, Poroshenko named a close confidante
as acting prime minister, the 36 year-old Vladimir Groisman.

Yatsenyuk, a banker who for a time headed the Ukrainian National Bank,
fears state bankruptcy if the government's work is blocked by elections.
The Ukrainian economy is in free fall. This year it will shrink by
between five and seven percent.

Company order books are empty, international investors are pulling out,
and Russia stopped gas deliveries in June. Among other things, Yatsenyuk
had planned to bring in €2.3 billion through tax hikes and cuts in
subsidies, in order to finance the military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

The billionaire oligarch Poroshenko hopes, however, that he can expand
his power base in parliamentary elections that will take place in the
exceptional situation of a civil war and a sharp confrontation with
Russia. For this reason, he is pushing through a brutal offensive
against the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, which he did not interrupt
after the crash of the Malaysian passenger plane to allow the recovery
of the bodies and securing of the crash site.

Largely unreported by the Western media, the Ukrainian army has been
bombarding densely populated areas with artillery and aircraft. On
Thursday, Human Rights Watch published a report documenting four cases
between July 12 and 21 in which the Ukrainian military attacked
civilians with Grad rockets.

These rockets—known as Stalin's Organs in the Second World War—are
uncontrolled and cause enormous damage when deployed against residential
areas. At least 16 people have died in the cases documented. Human
Rights Watch accused the Ukrainian military of breaching international
human rights, which could be treated as a war crime.

The fascists of Svoboda have taken on the job of intimidating internal
political opponents of Poroshenko. They justify their support for new
elections—which they had previously opposed, fearing a loss of
votes—saying that a parliament in which “state criminals” and “agents of
Moscow” sit should no longer exist. By “criminals” and “agents” they
mean the Party of the Regions of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and
the Communist Party, which received 30 and 13 percent of the vote
respectively in the last parliamentary election, held two years ago.

The chairman of the Communist Party was beaten up by a Svoboda
parliamentary deputy after he demanded an end to the military operation
in eastern Ukraine. He was subsequently ejected from the chamber by the
parliamentary president. The party’s parliamentary faction status was
then removed, and there are demands that it be banned.

The new parliamentary elections, set for October 2, recall the Reichstag
election under Hitler in March 1933 and the Egyptian presidential
election in May 2014—held under conditions of emergency rule and the
suppression of the opposition.