Mark Solonin on the MH-17 trial: the prosecution did not name the organizers of the crime

“What, in my opinion, is of great public interest in the case of the MH-17 crash.

Exactly two questions: the first and the second.

First, what happened? What happened to this Boeing on July 17, 2014, in the skies over Donbass?

And the second question: why did this happen? I emphasize - not "why" happened, "why" - this is intent, and maybe there was no intent there. Why did this happen?

Item number 1 what happened. In general, the first guesses, quite well-founded, about this appeared in the very first hours after the tragedy, when Russian TV channels with joy and pride reported that Novorossiya militias had shot down a Ukrainian plane.

Then, as you remember, there were photos of the Buk, the launcher moving in those places; then there were interceptions, then there were photographs of the wreckage of the aircraft with more than characteristic holes. And finally, the last questions fell away when on October 13, 2015, the Dutch Security Council, the technical body responsible for the technical review of the issue, provided a giant - I think, 250 pages, in small handwriting - technical report, after which everything became clear and understandable to everyone.

The plane, Boeing, flight MH-17 was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile of the Buk complex, a Russian complex delivered to Donbass from the territory of the Russian Federation; there he left, after what happened, what happened.

The launch took place from an agricultural field in the area of the village of Snezhnoe, that is, from the territory that at that time was controlled by illegal armed groups that were controlled by the Russian Federation at that time.

Now this has become clear, I repeat once again, this is how long (passed) - October 2015 - that is, six years ago. Six years ago, as is clear to all sane people in all corners of the Earth.

In this tragedy, the Australians, the Malaysians, the Dutch, and the British, in general, citizens of different countries of the world, were killed.

What new have we learned from that indictment, which the prosecutor read out for two days, and I think that it will also be included in the verdict, but the verdict will not be until next fall, imagine, it will be passed.

Nothing new.

This version has been fully confirmed: yes, the plane was shot down by a Buk missile launched from a field near Snezhnoye. Almost all those arguments, facts, photographs, records, and so on, what was presented earlier - were confirmed.

A lot of new things have appeared. The protocols of the interrogation of witnesses appeared. In particular, twelve people testified to the court that they personally observed the delivery of this installation literally to the launch point, and not in general its movement across Donbass; saw and heard the moment of launch, and so on.

That is, what all sane people knew was confirmed.

Well, as for the people poisoned by the Russian propaganda machine, affectionately called "quilted jackets", well, I think they received a new confirmation of their faith.

They believed before, and now they have strengthened their belief that Russia, as the only skeleton of spirituality, surrounded by evil pi ******** who want to take away our spirituality, steal our gas, the Americans shit, the Englishwoman shits, and now they also bribed the court in The Hague, just as they bribed and took into their own hands the Kiev junta, which did the whole thing.

Yes, unfortunately, according to polls, more than 90% of Russians answer this way, but even with the amendment that in the current situation in Russia it is necessary to answer, thinking that you are answering on the street, all the same, of course, the percentages are frightening. What should I do? Well, sick, drug addicts cannot be persuaded - they must be treated, rescued, but not persuaded. Everything is clear with this point.

Let's move on to the second point, much more important and difficult: why did what happened?

After all, an anti-aircraft missile even has a Russian abbreviation - SAM, that is, an anti-aircraft guided missile. It is controllable, it does not fly by itself. How did it happen that she hit and destroyed a passenger plane?

But this question, how did it happen, it breaks down into many questions, starting from the very beginning: how, in general, was the fire launcher able to leave the military unit?

According to the investigation and the prosecutor's office, it is assumed that this was a Russian air defense brigade located in Kursk. How could she even walk outside the gate?

Was it stolen? Was there an armed attack on the base? No.

Was there an order? Well, it's impossible in the army without an order. Without an order in the army, a soldier does not leave the gate on leave. Was there an order? What was in the order? What was the combat mission set?

There can be no order: go and see what is there in general. It is not written that way. There was an order, a combat mission was set.

How was the issue, in particular, target selection, resolved in this order? Well, they knew that the rig was going where a passenger plane was flying in the sky, at least that's possible.

And, mind you, the people who drew up this order, well, the shells did not fly over them, the bullets did not whistle, there was no time trouble, there was time to think about it.

When it (the installation) arrived in the territory controlled by Russian militants, who controlled it? To whom was it transferred under operational control?

Or was it not passed on to anyone at all? Or was it still controlled from Kursk? Or from Moscow? Or where?

And who carried out the target designation? And, finally, the last question: what actually happened, and why did he press the button for the combat crews of this installation and intercept?

A large set of questions to which there is no answer. He hadn't been there since the first weeks.

I do not have it to this moment. In my opinion, no one has a clear answer to this set of questions.

There is a huge range of answer options in the widest range, starting at the edge of the range - this is a technical failure. It happens? Yes, it happens. The technique breaks down. Any technique breaks down. Moreover, an old rocket, almost Soviet-made, which has been lying around for twenty years in a warehouse.

Yes, there was an unauthorized launch. Does this happen? It happens. And the crew immediately turned off the backlight. And the toggle switch didn't work. Does this happen? It happens. This is technically possible.

Whether this was actually the case is another question.

At the other end of the range of possible options is the monstrous story that a deliberate interception was made, the deliberate destruction of a passenger plane with the monstrous goal of creating a casus belli, creating a pretext for the deployment of a full-scale war, as a result of which tens of thousands, if not more, people could die. ...

Is it technically possible? Oh sure. This rocket also has much greater capabilities than to shoot down this one slowly - from the point of view of a rocket - flying plane.

Can we assume that the Russian special services are organizing provocations? Yes, this can be assumed. But it does not at all follow from this that this actually happened.

So, what have we learned as a result of that investigation and that indictment, which is practically already voiced in this part? We didn't know anything.

We have not received any answer to any of the questions, sub-questions, a quarter of the questions.

And why? And because there is physically no one in the dock.

Virtually in the dock there are four defendants, these are four individuals who did not occupy - and to this day do not occupy - any positions either in the military, or in the administrative, or in the political structure of the Russian Federation.

To discuss whether they were the customers and organizers of this whole thing - well, this can be left out and it is not even discussed. And on the question of whether they were directly executors, or whether they pressed the button, the prosecutor said many times: "Of course not, these four did not press the button and were not inside the launcher."

What did they do, what are they charged with? What are their criminal actions? We look at the screen.

"On behalf of and accompanied by the suspects, the launcher was delivered to the site of the shooting." This is a machine translation from Dutch, from the official website of the Dutch prosecutor's office.

Well, that is, if you give such simple life examples, this is about the same as a taxi driver who transported the killer from point A to point B.

They did something like that. But here an interesting question arises: did this "taxi driver" interact in any way with the "killer"?

The hardest part is always to prove the absence of something.

Therefore, here, dear audience, you either need to believe me, or go to the website of the Dutch prosecutor's office and read the entire report, the auto-translation works.

In this huge text, which was read for two hours, there was one paragraph, one single fragment - it is in front of you, which mentions in general some kind of interaction between the accused, the defendants and the crew.

Section 3-4-5-5: "Pulatov (of the accused) seeks connections with the BUK-Telar crew".

... I quote: “Although there are no intercepted telephone conversations from the number ending in 6335, on the basis of other results of the investigation it can be concluded that the user of this number is in contact with the Buk crew or is one of the Buk crew members”...

It's all. And there are no other traces of the interaction of the four suspects with the crew of the Buk, that is, with the performers of the lowest rank, these are not organizers at all, no".

The entire video commentary by Mark Solonin can be viewed here.