Are you sure? If so, what convinced you?
Disclaimer: I'm not going to lie about my identity. I'm Russian. Most people in my social circle believe "Western" MH-17 propaganda. Some believe Russian MH-17 propaganda. Both groups also believe even more dangerous lies, and that makes me genuinely interested how the propaganda works on the micro-level (convincing individual people).
- bragged about it in social media
- talked about it on unencrypted radio
- very carefully moved some gear away in one of the following nights
- bragged about it in social media
This I understand completely. Was entirely convinced by this myself and really shocked much later to recognize how easily that bragging post could be staged.
- talked about it on enencrypted radio
This is interesting. These were normal cell phone calls. Ukrainian three-letter agency routinely intercepted and published these. I think, if we mistrust the timestamps, only one of the published calls is both clearly linked to this airplane and implying that separatists thought it was them shooting [1]. This one might be interesting to listen to even if you don't understand any Russian, and it's only half a minute long. Do you think this is a real intercepted phone call, not pasted from several different ones?
- very carefully moved some gear away in one of the following nights
Probably. But what do we really know about that? The only published piece of evidence about the route is this video [2]. How do you know when it was filmed and whether it has been manipulated?
> bragged about it in social media
>> This I understand completely. Was entirely convinced by this myself and really shocked much later to recognize how easily that bragging post could be staged.
However simple it is to stage a social media post I'd still guess it is a 100 times easier to send it from the real account.
And one extra observation: detailed analysis of the missile fragment has been done and I think they also points to a version of the missile that the Ukrainian army did nit have access to.
Now even if we had dismissed the moving of equipment as well as the audio we would still have a social media post that could have been staged but more likely not as well as fragments of a rocket only available to the russian side.
The alternative:
- staged social media
- lying about audio evidence
- faking video
- fooling and/or getting Dutch investigators to lie
- all without a single leak.
I know personally that if I was involved in a misinformation operation like that I would have looked for ways to collect evidence and then as soon as possible send it to a trustworthy reporter or something.
I mean: even Russian social media trolling operators grow tired of lying, quit and come forward.
I guess I'm not alone in that.
To raise an analogy:
It is possible that the moon landing has been staged. But the chance of that happening without anyone of those involved leaking over all those years? That is a very close to 0% chance.
1) The part about fake evidence seems to be firmly within reach of Ukrainian secret service: after all, the original article is about them successfully staging a high-profile crime. I'd hypothesize such organizations have on average less than one Snowden per generation.
2) Then, there is a rather opaque entity: JIT. On the other hand, it is large and international. How do we assess the probability of leak here?
3) Does misinformation need to involve people without strong NDAs? Not sure. Also, here's the most strange part of this story. Both suggested launch sites are in rather populated areas, so there were a lot of witnesses, both civilian and military (both sides). So, you'd expect some tweets and pictures, like "look wtf these bastards launched" from the other side of conflict? I tried searching. Found none.
> The part about fake evidence seems to be firmly within reach of Ukrainian secret service: after all, the original article is about them successfully staging a high-profile crime.
No doubt about that.
And the moon landings could be special effects.
> I'd hypothesize such organizations have on average less than one Snowden per generation.
Remember: firing the rocket must have been done by the army, not by some NSA like agency. That increases the risk of leaks.
> Then, there is a rather opaque entity: JIT. On the other hand, it is large and international. How do we assess the probability of leak here?
You write like there is a cover up here, but what do those guys have to win by blaming one part instead of the other?
Western Europeans does not generally go around hating Russians trying to find something to blame them for.
> Also, here's the most strange part of this story. Both suggested launch sites are in rather populated areas, so there were a lot of witnesses, both civilian and military (both sides). So, you'd expect some tweets and pictures, like "look wtf these bastards launched" from the other side of conflict? I tried searching. Found none.
This, if true, is also interesting.
Also: here is some reading material that goes into the investigation:
https://www.om.nl/onderwerpen/mh17-crash/
https://www.om.nl/mh17-ezine-juni2016/4-forensic-research-en...
https://www.om.nl/mh17-ezine-juni2016/7-weapon-system-en.htm...
Sure. But by how much? Ukrainians were actively moving their BUK launchers around at the time, so the movement itself wasn't going to raise suspicions. The firing itself is going to involve a dozen of officers. Other soldiers will see the rocket and this will leak? Don't know. The opposing soldiers have also definitely seen the rocket, and you would suppose this is not their secret, so you'd expect them to just tell the journalists? Nothing.
> You write like there is a cover up here, but what do those guys have to win by blaming one part instead of the other?
Or to lose. US government has consistently expressed a strong opinion on this case. How do we know what influence do they have on Dutch investigators?
> Western Europeans does not generally go around hating Russians trying to find something to blame them for.
Sure, false flag operations are not generally guided by emotions.
So, mr skeptic, here's dozens of articles about investigation: https://www.om.nl/onderwerpen/mh17-crash/
They even had a separate presentation in Russian at the bottom of the page.
If a passenger aircraft was supposedly shot down with a surface-to-air missile over, for example, Argentina, would you expect an international investigation team to say they checked with Argentinian air defence bases and made sure their launchers don't have traces of a recent launch? Has JIT said anything of this sort?
This is an international investigation team. I think it's credible enough.
[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/no-conclusive-evid...