To be able to keep their troops supplied with food and weapons, Ukrainian transport planes made daily flights over the conflict area. The Ukrainian forces commander, Sergei Mandalina, complained of food shortages and also a diminishing supply of ammunition. On 17 July the Ukrainian troops near Marinivka were facing heavy artillery from the pro-Russian separatists, but Commander Mandalina did not request air backup because too many Ukrainian planes had been downed by enemy missiles during the past week. The separatists had been targeting the Ukrainian air support for days; using their anti-aircraft weapons, they had managed to down a number of Ukrainian military planes, including two large transport planes with soldiers and supplies on board.
In the early morning of 17 July 2014, journalists saw a single launcher on a low-loader truck trundling through the gritty mining town of Snizhne; it was similar to a Buk system but without its usual accompaniments. Someone took a picture of the missile launcher as it made its way through pro-Russia controlled territory and posted it on the internet. A Twitter post on 17 July reported the sighting of a Buk at the intersection of Shakhtostroiteley Boulevard and Ilych Avenue in Snizhne, heading east in the direction of Marinivka. It suddenly became clear that not only did the rebels have man-portable air-defence systems, known as MANPADS, but they also had at least one Buk missile system, marked with the identification number 3X2 (where the X stands for a number that could not easily be deciphered).
A phone call between two rebel fighters, intercepted by Ukraine’s intelligence services, suggested that the Buk had arrived in Donetsk with a crew. Less than half an hour after the plane crashed, the commander-in-chief of the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, Igor Girkin, had celebrated the downing of a Ukrainian military jet with a post on his profile on the Russian version of Facebook, VKontakte. The post received over two thousand likes in a short space of time, but it was then quickly deleted. Later, Girkin claimed the post had been a fake.
On 18 July a video was posted online by the Ukrainian ministry of the interior. In this video, a Buk missile launcher, travelling through Luhansk, was now missing at least one of its missiles. On the side of the truck was a telephone number. It belonged to a truck rental company in Donetsk. The owner later said the vehicle had been stolen from him in June by pro-Russian separatists. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed in a press conference on 21 July that the video had been in fact filmed in Ukrainian government-controlled territory—in the town of Krasnoarmeysk now known as Pokrovsk, which had been controlled by the Ukrainian military since 11 May—and not in the separatist-held part of the country.
Amid the disputes over who was responsible for this horrendous crime and the political fallout it caused, the bereaved families of 298 people were trying to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones. The general feeling was that, if it had been an accidental downing of a civilian aircraft, someone should have at least apologised. But over time the families of the victims no longer thought of the disaster as an accident—to them, killing their loved ones had been no accident; it was a crime. And now they wanted to know who had given the order and how a Buk rocket could have been launched without anyone seeing it happen.
The DSB, the one party who would be able to bring clarity to the bereaved and everyone else involved, was still waiting for clearance in Kiev in September 2014. Jordan Withers, who had lost his uncle, the WHO media coordinator Glenn Thomas, in the crash said he was shocked it could take so long to obtain justice: ‘I find it unbelievable hundreds of people can be murdered and everyone can be so slow to react.’
Chapter 20
The wreckage
Normally when a civil aviation accident occurs, the investigators try to visit the crash site as soon as possible. Responsibility for the investigation of the disaster lies with the country in which the crash has occurred, together with the owner of the aircraft—in this case, Ukraine and Malaysia Airlines.
But the MH17 catastrophe followed a different procedure. At the request of the Ukrainian government and after consultation with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Dutch Safety Board was entrusted to take the lead in the investigation.
The DSB created a basis of cooperation between the states involved in the investigation of the downing of flight MH17—Netherlands, Ukraine, Malaysia, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and the Russian Federation. Representatives of these states were members of the international investigation team and had access to the investigation information as it became available, making it possible for them to study and verify it firsthand.
Although considerable effort was made to enable Dutch investigators to visit the crash site, because of the unstable situation there was no guarantee of their safety or that they would be able to conduct a long-term investigation. There were two small teams of investigators based close to the crash site at Kharkiv and Soledar, ready to travel to visit the wreckage area as soon as the situation allowed it. But in the end, it took almost four months before a proper investigation of the wreckage site could be made.
For the relatives, it had all taken much too long and they criticised the Safety Board. Although Ukrainians and Malaysians and observers from the OSCE had briefly visited the area and were able to take photographs during those first days, it had been impossible to stay at the site for long periods of time. Alexander Hug, the acting head of the OSCE mission in Ukraine, had left with his team to visit the disaster area just after he heard about the crash. After reaching the area, the team were confronted by separatists. ‘A rebel leader stood in front of me,’ Hug told journalists. ‘A big, intimidating man armed with a machine gun. I could smell alcohol. He said: “This is as far as you go.”’
The teams, however, were by no means sitting passively as they waited for permission to enter the area. A great deal of investigation data had already been collected and was being processed and analysed. Malaysians had handed over small parts of wreckage material salvaged from the crash site and there were photos and other data. A constant concern for the investigators was that the wreckage, spread over six sites, was mostly left unguarded and, by the time they could access it, it would undoubtedly have been seriously contaminated.
Mid-August it became known that rebel commander Igor Girkin had resigned his position as defence minister of the insurgent’s Donetsk People’s Republic. Rumours spread that the decision was made due to Girkin being severely wounded in combat, but there was no evidence that this was true. The leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic announced that Girkin was dismissed from his position of defence minister ‘on his own request’ and he was being assigned ‘some other tasks’. Many people believed that the main reason for the removal of Girkin from the position of defence minister was because of the amount of attention created by the downing of MH17 and the negative impact on Russia’s actions in Ukraine this had caused.
Alexander Borodai had also resigned as prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. In a press conference in Donetsk on 7 August 2014, Borodai announced his resignation and he stated, ‘I came here as a crisis manager, a start-upper, if you want. I’ve managed to achieve a lot in the past several months, the DPR has been established as a state.’ He further stated at this press conference that he believed a ‘native Muscovite’ like himself should not lead the Donetsk People’s Republic. The fact that nearly all top figures in the rebel movement at the time were from Russia was awkward for the Kremlin, which maintained that pro-Moscow sentiment was indigenous in eastern Ukraine. Borodai stepped aside in favour of Alexander Zakharchenko, a former electrician from the area. Igor Girkin and Borodai both slipped back into Russia in 2015, deeming their job finished as ‘patriots’ in east Ukraine.