Voice analysis points to general in MH17 disaster
MOSCOW A semi-retired Russian three-star general oversaw the cross-border movements of a rocket launcher used to bring down a passenger jet in July 2014 over eastern Ukraine, killing all aboard, an investigation by a team of reporting outlets has found.
The reporting team, made up of McClatchy and investigative websites Bellingcat (based in London) and The Insider (based in Moscow), identifies the general as Nikolai Fedorovich Tkachev.
His identification is potentially a breakthrough in a case that has frustrated Dutch and other investigators who have struggled for years to identify voices on a key phone intercept. They may now be closer to decoding the chain of command that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
In the intercept, a commander is heard giving orders and talking with junior officers. They appear to be discussing equipment associated with a missile launcher and used to move it.
The investigators are reviewing the new information and had no immediate comment.
Dutch investigators said in late 2016 that the missile was fired from a BUK launcher that had been transported from Russia to rebel positions in Ukraine before the crash and transported back into Russia soon afterwards. Ethnic Russian separatists known as the Donbass People’s Militia have received aid from Russia, and controlled the area inside Ukraine from where the missile was said to have been fired.
The identification of Tkachev follows rigorous analysis by experts of audio files that, along with other indicators, confirms with high likelihood that he is the man heard on phone intercepts ordering the movement of the BUK missile launcher at the Russia-Ukraine border in the days before and after the plane was downed.
Tkachev is a semi-retired general who received an award from Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2012 and then moved into reserve status after serving as deputy commander of Russia’s Eastern Military District.
A journalist with The Insider had numerous phone conversations with Tkachev. The reporter confronted the general on Friday with the findings and results of the audio analysis. He denied giving the order or even being in the area.
The Russian government had no immediate comment.
The five countries – the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine – in the special Joint Investigation Team have been repeatedly thwarted by Russia, which has sought to smear the credibility of the Dutch investigators and their initial conclusion that a Russian missile brought down MH17.
A series in November by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad highlighted how pro-Russia agitators in the Netherlands have tried to smear the investigation and have given victims’ families misleading information.
In September 2016, the Joint Investigation Team released recordings of two apparent Russian officers, one clearly a commander, and sought public help in identifying them.
McClatchy’s partners recorded several recent phone calls with Tkachev. These were compared with the recordings of the intercepted calls that the Joint Investigative Team posted on YouTube. The reporting team gave the original audio recordings and those obtained in recent calls with Tkachev to the University of Colorado’s National Centre for Media Forensics for analysis. Using algorithms to determine voice patterns, the centre’s director, Catalin Grigoras, concluded that the voices appear to belong to the same man.
The reporting partners also shared the recordings with the Forensic Science Centre of Lithuania. Its experts concluded that three of five recordings from the original audio closely matched the recently recorded calls.
The commander in the recordings released by the Joint Investigation Team is referred to by the call sign Delfin, the Russian word for dolphin.
But in one of the intercepted calls, Delfin is referred to as Fedor Nikoaevich, an apparent mishmash of his real name and patronymic (the first name of someone’s father in Russia), Nikolay Fedorovich. The man identified as Delfin sternly corrects the speaker.
In interviews that appeared later on the internet, two Russian mercenaries involved in the fighting in the breakaway region referred to Delfin as being on the level of a ‘‘combrig’’ – a relatively GETTY IMAGES high rank of brigadier general. He is also referred to in slang terms as a ‘‘vacationer’’, suggesting he was not a permanent leader but rather one there to train and bring order to the separatists.
Tkachev was believed to have been tasked with bringing organisation to decentralised ethnic Russian separatist military units in the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR).
Igor Girkin, reportedly a former colonel in Russian military intelligence during Russia’s seizure of Crimea, has said publicly that he worked with Delfin in the summer of 2014.
Girkin is a self-described Russian nationalist and self-styled minister of defence for the breakaway regions. Interviewed in Moscow in late November on behalf of the reporting team, he declined to blame Ukrainian government fighters for the shootdown. TNS