Missile that downed MH17 came from Russian brigade

UTRECHT (The Netherlands): Investigators probing the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 said yesterday for the first time that the missile which brought down the plane over eastern Ukraine came from a Russian military brigade.

The Joint Investigation Team “has come to the conclusion that the BUK-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from 53rd Anti-aircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk, Russia”, Dutch investigator Wilbert Paulissen said here.

The flight was blown out of the sky on July 17, 2014, while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew, most of them Dutch, were killed. But there were 17 nationalities on board, including Australians and Malaysians.

The investigators had previously concluded that the plane was hit by a BUK missile brought in from Russia, and fired from territory in Ukraine held by Moscow-backed rebels. But they stopped short of saying who pulled the trigger.

Now, the team had painstakingly recreated the route taken by the missile convoy from Kursk into Ukraine using videos and photos.

Paulissen said the team had “ascertained that the BUKTELAR has a number of unique characteristics. These characteristics, as such, served as a type of fingerprint for the missile”.

“We are convinced that our findings justify that the BUKTELAR came from the 53rd Brigade, which is part of the military of the Russian Federation.”

The probe led by the Netherlands is focusing on 100 people suspected of having played an “active role” in the incident.

They have identified two top suspects, who go by the aliases Orion and Delfin, after obtaining their wire-tapped conversations before and after the plane was shot down.