Video: Two Nights Under Fire In Eastern Ukraine
During a week embedded with the Ukrainian army, Mykhaylo Shtekel from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service spent two days and two nights under fire in the trenches of the 92nd mechanized brigade near Shchastya (which means "happiness"), a town in eastern Ukraine which changed hands in fighting with Russian-backed separatists last summer. The attacks, on May 25-26, took place at the same checkpoint where the unit captured two alleged members of Russian special forces a few days earlier.
Russian Maker Of Buk Says MH17 Downed By Older Version Of Missile
The Russian maker of the Buk air-defense missile system says the company has concluded Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by an older version of the missile.
Mikhail Malyshevsky, an adviser to the director-general of the state-controlled Almaz-Antei consortium, was speaking at a Moscow news conference on June 2.
He said the older version of the Buk was still used by the Ukrainian military but no longer in the Russian military arsenal.
Malyshevsky said that the analysis was based on photographs of the wreckage available to the public.
Controversy continues over who shot down the plane last summer over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.
Ukraine and the West suspect it was destroyed by a Russian surface-to-air missile fired by Russian forces or separatist rebels fighting in the area.
Russia claimed it was downed by a Ukrainian fighter jet.
British investigators on May 31 accused Russia's defense ministry of doctoring satellite images to support that claim.
Based on reporting by AP, Interfax, and TASS
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
The Russian maker of the Buk surface-to-air missile system says it has concluded that the Malaysian Airlines jet that crashed in eastern Ukraine last summer was hit by a version of the missile that is used by Ukraine but not by Russia.
The statement from state-controlled arms maker Almaz-Antei came two days after a British-based independent investigative group said it had determined that Russia’s Defense Ministry released doctored, misdated photographs to support Moscow's claim that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down the plane.
All 298 people aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 were killed when the passenger jet was shot down on July 17 while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the deadliest single incident in a conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces that has killed more than 6,400 people.
The findings released on June 2 by an adviser to the director of Almaz-Antei were the latest step by Moscow to counter accusations and evidence suggesting the jet was shot down by rebels with a Buk missile fired from territory under their control, as U.S. and German intelligence sources have said.
The adviser, Mikhail Malyshevsky, told a news conference in Moscow that the "initial phase" of the company's research showed that MH17 was shot down by an older version of the Buk that Russia has not produced for six years. He said that Ukraine's arsenal does include this version.
Malyshevsky said the analysis was based on photographs of the wreckage available to the public.
A report released on May 31 by British citizen journalist Eliot Higgins and his website, Bellingcat, concluded that satellite photographs released by the Kremlin days after the crash "were digitally modified using Adobe Photoshop CS5 software."
The report consisted of digital forensic analysis of those photos.
An independent team of Dutch investigators that has visited the crash site is to present its findings in October.
With reporting by AP, Interfax, and TASS