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• published: 2014-07-18
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Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. On 17 July 2014, the Boeing 777 crashed near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, approximately 40 km (25 mi) from the Ukraine--Russia border. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members onboard the aircraft are believed to have been killed. The crash occurred in the conflict zone of the ongoing Donbass insurgency. According to American intelligence officials, the plane was shot down, but the origin of the missile could not be confirmed. However, they speculated that there was some degree of Russian involvement. Ukrainian Interior Ministry advisor Anton Gerashchenko stated that the aircraft was shot down at an altitude of 10,000 m (33,000 ft) by a Buk surface-to-air missile. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called it an "act of terrorism." In response, pro-Russian separatist rebels accused the Ukrainian government of shooting down the plane. Ukrainian security services claimed to have intercepted two phone conversations in which pro-Russian separatists discuss having just shot down a civilian plane with alleged GRU officers. Multiple sources cited a post on the VKontakte social networking service that was made by Igor Girkin, commander of the Donbass People's Militia, in which he acknowledged shooting down an aircraft at approximately the same time that the flight was reported to have crashed in eastern Ukraine in the same area near the Russian border. The post specifically referenced how warnings were issued for planes not to fly in their airspace and the downing of an An-26 which the Ukraine Crisis Media Center suggested was a case of misidentification with MH17. The post was deleted later in the day and the account behind it claimed that Igor Girkin had no official account on that social network. The incident was preceded by the loss of a Ukrainian military Su-25 close air support aircraft the previous day and a Ukrainian military An-26 transport aircraft three days earlier. Ukrainian government officials accused the Russian military of downing the aircraft, but a spokesman for Russia's Defence Ministry rejected those accusations as absurd. Ukrainian interior ministry official Anton Gerashchenko stated on Facebook that the airliner was "shot down with a surface-to-air missile by terrorists", referring to militants seeking to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia. Later the Ukrainian President stated that Ukrainian authorities "don't exclude" the possibility that the plane was shot down. This was denied by the rebels, stating that they have no weapons capable of shooting down planes at the height the Malaysian airliner was flying. An Associated Press reporter on Thursday saw seven rebel-owned tanks parked at a filling station outside the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne, a few miles southeast of the crash site. In the town, he also observed a Buk missile system, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 22,000 metres (72,000 feet). Vehicle-mounted 9K35 Strela-10 missiles were also filmed by Russian Lifenews team near Donetsk. On 29 June, NTV reported that separatists had access to a Buk after taking control of a Ukrainian air defence base. On the same day, the Donetsk People's Republic claimed possession of such a system in a since-deleted tweet. On 14 July Sergey Kurginyan in an interview with representatives of Donbass People's Militia promised that "talented specialists" have arrived to fix Buk launchers taken over from Ukrainian army. A defence expert later reported that to shoot down an aircraft at such a high altitude would have required a long-range surface-to-air missile possibly assisted by radar or by an air-to-air missile from another aircraft. The Buk surface-to-air missile system uses radar guidance. According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. agencies are divided over whether the plane was downed by the Russian military or by pro-Russia separatists, who may lack the expertise required. Still they insist that "All roads lead to the Russians to some degree". A source from Russia's Agency Rosaviatsia said the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine had closed its airspace over eastern Ukraine because of what it called "anti-terrorist operation[s]." However, shortly after the crash the International Air Transport Association wrote in a statement: "Based on the information currently available it is believed that the airspace that the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions." The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) published an alleged wiretap of separatist commanders reporting that a civilian airliner had been shot down. Flight 17 was allegedly shot down by a group of Russian-backed Cossack militants near the village of Chornukhine (Ukrainian: Чорнухине), Luhansk Oblast, some 80 km (50 mi) north-west of Donetsk, according to recordings of intercepted phone calls between Russian military intelligence officers and members of rebel groups.