MH17: Russia accuses US of fabricating evidence

Russia's deputy defence minister says US evidence 'mostly cited social networks' and did not correspond to reality

 

By Tom Parfitt, Moscow

7:02PM BST 24 Jul 2014

Russia suggested on Thursday that the United States was trying to fabricate evidence that separatists in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

Anatoly Antonov, deputy defence minister, said Washington's claims that pro-Russian rebels fired a missile that hit the plane on July 17 "mostly cited social networks" and did not correspond to reality.

Alexander Yakovenko, Russia's ambassador to Britain, also poured scorn on the widespread belief that Moscow is supplying the rebels, saying: "Russia doesn't supply weapons to local de facto (separatist) authorities in eastern Ukraine" and that "no evidence whatsoever has been presented that the Russian government has been doing this".

The ambassador's comment came after a Nato source told Reuters news agency the alliance was seeing a rising flow of arms into the conflict zone from Russia.

Mr Antonov said US intelligence experts had claimed they could "prove the guilt of the [pro-Russian] militia and almost Russia itself" and were in possession of technical data and satellite photographs to back up their accusation.

"So where is this evidence?" he asked on the Rossiya-24 channel. "Why is it not presented to the public? Is it, if I may say so, still being finished off?"

Barack Obama, the US president, said earlier this week that MH17 was brought down by a surface-to-air missile that was fired from "territory that is controlled by Russian separatists". Samantha Powers, US ambassador to the UN, went further adding "we cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel in operating the systems".

US intelligence officials appeared to backtrack somewhat later, saying they had no definitive evidence about who exactly fired the missile, or about Russian involvement. However, the officials said it was implausible that Ukrainian forces fired the missile, and they still believed the separatists were likely to blame.

^{An armed pro-Russian separatist guards a crash site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 (Reuters)}

Also on Thursday, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister resigned after parliament's governing coalition collapsed. New elections to the chamber are expected to be held in October or November.

"I announce my resignation in connection with the dissolution of the parliamentary coalition and the blocking of government initiatives," a furious Mr Yatsenyuk told parliament.

Mr Yatsenyuk said the "government and the prime minister must resign" after several parties pulled out of the European Choice parliamentary majority.

The pro-Western Mr Yatsenyuk – who has helped steer the country through upheaval since the ouster of Kremlin-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych in February – lashed out at the decision to pull the plug on the coalition as Kiev is struggling to end a bloody separatist insurrection tearing apart the east.

Ukrainian forces have made advances against pro-Russian separatists in the east of in recent days, but the rebels still control the large cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

 

^{A piece of the wreckage is seen at a crash site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 (Reuters)}

In Holland, more planes arrived carrying a further 51 unidentified bodies from the MH17 crash, which killed all 298 people on board.

The Dutch Safety Board (DSB), which is in charge of investigating the crash, said that it had successfully extracted data from the aircraft's flight data recorder, or "black box", for analysis. The recorder had not been tampered with, the DSB said.

Alexander Khodakovsky, leader of the rebels' Vostok battalion, admitted on Wednesday that the separatists had a Buk missile system, the launcher thought to be fired by mistake at the Malaysian Airlines jet, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

However, Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, denied on Thursday that the rebels had such a weapon in an interview with the BBC.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10989525/MH17-Russia-accuses-US-of-fabricating-evidence.html