In MH17 shootdown, a brewing blame game
A top Ukrainian official is the latest to join the blame game over who is responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
Ukraine's director of informational security, Vitaly Nayda, told CNN that a Russian was behind the downing of the jetliner.
"A Russian-trained, well-equipped, well-educated officer... pushed that button deliberately," he was quoted as saying.
CNN also quoted Nayda as saying that a conversation was taped between a Russian officer and his office in Moscow. This gave the official the surety that minutes before the missile was launched, there was a report to a Russian officer that the plane was flying over the airspace.
"They knew the plane was coming with constant speed, in constant direction," and should have known it was not a fighter jet but "a big civilian plane," Nadya told CNN.
Since MH17 was downed on July 17, a blame game has ensued over who is responsible for the deaths of the 298 on board the jetliner which was shot down in eastern Ukraine while on the way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Russian President Vladimir Putin looked to the conflict in Ukraine as the cause but pledged support to aid in investigations.
“This tragedy would not have happened, if there had been peace on that land, or in any case if military operations in southeastern Ukraine had not been renewed. And without doubt the government of the territory on which it happened bears responsibility for this frightening tragedy.
“We will do everything that we can so that an objective picture of what happened can be achieved. This is a completely unacceptable thing.”
Ukrainian separatist leader Aleksander Borodai said the passenger jet was “truly shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott have urged Russia to step up.
"We all know that there are problems in Ukraine. We also know who is very substantially to blame for those problems, and the idea that Russia can somehow say that none of this had anything to do with them because it happened in Ukrainian air space frankly does not stand up to any serious scrutiny," Abbott said.
US President Barack Obama's administration said it is convinced that flight MH17 was brought down last Thursday by an SA-11 missile fired from territory in Eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
Reuters reported today that US intelligence officials said they believe pro-Russian separatists likely shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 "by mistake."
The intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the "most plausible explanation" for why the separatists fired what the US believes was a Russian-made SA-11 surface-to-air missile at MH17 was that they had mistaken it for some other kind of aircraft.
"Five days into it (following the crash) it does appear to be a mistake," one of the officials said in a briefing for reporters.
Reuters quoted the officials as saying that their conclusion was backed up by intercepted conversations of known pro-Russian separatists, whose voice prints had been verified by US agencies.
The speakers initially bragged about shooting down a transport plane, but later acknowledged that they might have made a mistake, the officials said. – July 23, 2014.
