Dutch Report: MH17 Downed By Buk Surface-To-Air Missile
By RFE/RL
Dutch air-crash investigators say Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was brought down by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from eastern Ukraine that detonated to the left of the aircraft's cockpit.
The investigators told a press conference on October 17 at a military base in the southern Netherlands that airlines flying routes over the conflict area should have recognized the dangers but that none of the 61 airlines flying eastern Ukraine at the time appeared to be aware of the risk.
MH17 was on a routine flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in rebel-held eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, during heavy fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.
All 298 people on board died.
Earlier on October 13, the Dutch Safety Board told relatives of the passengers that all passengers died or immediately lost consciousness when it was hit by a missile.
The report does not say from what specific location the missile was fired. Due to rules governing international flight crash investigations, the Dutch Safety Board does not have the authority to apportion blame for the missile launch.
Just hours before the board issued its report, the head of Russia's state-controlled Almaz-Antey company, which produces Buk antiaircraft missile systems, sought to debunk some of the conclusions it said were in the Dutch investigation.
The head of the Almaz-Antey company, Yan Novikov, told a press conference in Moscow that simulations conducted by his company show both the location from which the missile was launched and the type of missile used differ from those determined by Dutch investigators.
He did not reveal how he knew what was in the Dutch report or whether he had been given an advance look.
Novikov told the media his company's tests showed that "if the Boeing 777 of the Malaysian Airlines had been shot down with the Buk missile-launching system, then it was launched from Zaroshchenske settlement (in Ukraine's Donetsk region)."
Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine maintain that the Zaroshchenske settlement was controlled by Ukrainian armed forces when the passenger plane was shot down.
That location would contradict open-source evidence collected by Dutch air-crash investigators ahead of the release of the Dutch Safety Board's report indicating the missile was launched from the settlement of Snizhne.
But Novikov said that simulations conducted by his company showed that a missile launched from Snizhne could not have hit the plane's left-wing engine, which had been the presumed cause of the airplane's crash.
The head of Almaz-Antey also said experiments by his company showed the plane was struck by a missile from an older model of the Buk antiaircraft system, the 9M38, which had long been withdrawn from Russian military service.
"In the result of the experiment, it became absolutely obvious that if the Boeing 777 was shot down with a Buk missile launcher, then it could have been only the missile -- I want you to pay attention to this -- the missile 9M38, the older modification of the missile 9M38M1," he said.
Novikov said the upcoming Dutch report mentions I-beam-shaped striking elements in the wreckage that would match a newer model of the Buk antiaircraft missile system -- the 9M38M1. That model is currently in use by both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces.
"The only thing that we do not yet understand is why fragments of 9M38M1 are among the evidence," he said.
Novikov did not say who was to blame for downing the aircraft.
However, both Moscow and Almaz-Antey have previously said the plane was likely brought down by a Buk missile shot by Kyiv.
In November 2014, Russian state-controlled TV broadcast photographs that it said suggested MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet. The photos were later dubbed forgeries by some Western experts who examined them.
Ukrainian and several Western officials say the missile that hit the plane was brought from Russia and launched from the rebel-held part of Ukraine.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says the Dutch safety board report into the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine is "an important building block" in the criminal probe of the tragedy. He also called on Russia to provide "complete cooperation" with the criminal probe being led by Dutch prosecutors.