DISINFO: The Netherlands has not taken into account evidence confirming Russia’s innocence in the downing of MH17
SUMMARY
The Russian experts have provided the Netherlands with key evidence of Russia’s innocence and Ukraine’s involvement in the tragedy, but the investigation has not taken them into account. Only now, 5 years after the tragedy and in a hopeless situation, the Dutch parliament began to doubt the official version.
RESPONSE
This is one narrative in pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign about the MH17 crash. On the 24th of May 2018, the JIT announced its conclusion that the BUK TELAR used to shoot down MH17 came from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces from Kursk in the Russian Federation. On the basis of the investigation conducted by the JIT, the Dutch Public Persecution service will prosecute Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin, Sergey Nikolayevich Dubinskiy, Oleg Yuldashevich Pulatov, and Leonid Volodymyrovych Kharchenko for causing the crash of the MH17 and murdering the 298 persons on board. The public hearing is scheduled for 9 March 2020 in the Netherlands. The "evidence" claimed by Russia, namely radar data and the "field experiment" conducted by the Russian military company Almaz-Antey, is only a small sample of misleading claims advanced by Moscow since 2015, some of which have contradicted one another. Also, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta found the claim that the Buk was of "Ukrainian origin" to be fabricated. See further debunking by Bellingcat and similar cases about the unwillingness of the JIT to consider evidence provided by Russia.