Russia's army unit that shot down a Malaysia Airways flight was in Ukraine : NPR - worldbreakingnewsdaily
An condo constructing in Izium, Ukraine, that was broken by Russian forces. Ukraine recaptured Izium in September 2022. Claire Harbage/NPR cover caption toggle caption Claire Harbage/NPR An condo constructing in Izium, Ukraine, that was broken by Russian forces. Ukraine recaptured Izium in September 2022. Claire Harbage/NPR KHARKIV, Ukraine — On the previous sweet firm warehouse […] The 53rd Anti-Plane Missile Brigade, the Russian army unit that shot down a Malaysia Airways flight in Ukraine, was located in Izium, Ukraine. The unit was the focus of an investigation by NPR and was located at a former firm warehouse near Bakhmut, the flashpoint for ongoing preventing in japanese Ukraine. After the Russian troops left, Oleksiy Zadniprovskiy and his workforce of humanitarian staff moved in to assist the not too long ago liberated space get better. The sources and documentation of the unit confirmed it wasn't simply any anti-aircraft unit, but it was the 53rd anti-Aircraft missile program. The 53rd Brigade is the most famous for its position in taking pictures down Malaysia Airways Flight MH17 in 2014, and has been a global pariah ever since, no less than as a lot as battle crimes investigators are involved. NPR has been tasked with providing detailed details about the unit's actions and whereabouts in the search of the Kharkiv area.
Published : 2 days ago by c-hunter in Travel
KHARKIV, Ukraine — On the previous sweet firm warehouse on Partisan Road in Izium, Ukraine, indicators of the Russian occupation had been in all places. An artillery spherical sat close to one of many partitions. Throughout, the stays of homes lay in rubble, with caved-in partitions and no roofs.
Native resident Oleksiy Zadniprovskiy greeted us there, together with a chained-up guard canine. After the Russian troops left, he and his workforce of humanitarian staff moved in to assist the not too long ago liberated space get better.
Zadniprovskiy launched us to Ruslan, a volunteer who declined to offer his final identify as a result of he feared hazard if the Russians return. Even now, the constructing is lower than 100 kilometers from Bakhmut, the flashpoint for ongoing preventing in japanese Ukraine.
Ruslan instructed us what we would come there to study: that he heard and noticed anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the neighborhood of the complicated whereas the realm was below Russian occupation.
The previous warehouse, adorned with banners of Western beers like Budweiser and Corona Additional, had been the non permanent headquarters of a Russian anti-aircraft unit. Prosecutors within the Kharkiv area of Ukraine confirmed that. They confirmed us a doc confiscated after the Russian retreat that named the unit’s commander, together with his telephone quantity and name signal — “Вoлда́й,” — together with the handle for his or her headquarters.
The sources and documentation additionally confirmed it wasn’t simply any anti-aircraft unit.
It was the 53rd Anti-Plane Missile Brigade, among the many most infamous — and wished — items within the Russian army.
The 53rd is finest identified for its position in taking pictures down Malaysia Airways Flight MH17 in 2014 because it flew over Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew died.
“You’ll be able to regard the downing of Flight MH17 [as the] Dutch 9/11,” mentioned Brechtje van de Moosdijk, a spokesperson for the Joint Investigation Crew exploring the civilian airline assault. “When it occurred, it was a scorching summer season’s day, July 17, 2014. All people was comfortable and on holidays or mendacity within the backyard or on the swimming pool. After which this airplane was downed.”
And the 53rd has been a global pariah ever since, no less than as a lot as battle crimes investigators are involved. The truth that the unit is working in Ukraine nonetheless right this moment? It is just like the Russian president taunting the remainder of the world.
“This unit, after it shot down Malaysia Airways Flight 17… didn’t face any retribution. They didn’t face any justice for the crimes they dedicated,” mentioned George Barros, a Russia analyst on the Institute for the Research of Warfare. “And sadly, that is very a lot systematic in the way in which that the Russian Federation has been in a position to violate worldwide regulation.”
On the path of the 53rd Brigade
Ukrainian army and intelligence sources instructed NPR that the 53rd Brigade was lively over a lot of 2022 within the Kharkiv area, an space within the northeast of Ukraine close to the Russian border.
However there was little concrete proof of the unit’s particular location. The 53rd Brigade makes a speciality of anti-aircraft missile programs. In contrast to infantry or mechanized items, they don’t combat on the entrance traces, the place open-source images of captured prisoners of battle can be utilized to offer details about a unit’s actions and whereabouts.
“Militaries undertake vital efforts to attempt to cover their necessary key battlefield property,” defined Barros. “The 53rd is actually a kind of as a result of it is designed to guard the front-line items from air assaults.”
Ukraine retook management of the Kharkiv area in September of final yr. Throughout that interval of preventing, Ukrainian forces retrieved some paperwork Russian forces left behind at an deserted headquarters within the Kharkiv area.
One of many paperwork listed the army items that Russian forces had within the Izium space. On the seventeenth line, there was details about the 53rd that we had been in search of.
“I can affirm that we’ve info that for a while they had been settled within the Izium district, within the Kharkiv area,” Oleksandr Philchakov, the lead prosecutor for the Kharkiv area, instructed NPR. Philchakov was monitoring varied Russian items as a part of his workplace’s efforts to prosecute alleged battle crimes.
Barros reviewed the doc and located it seemed genuine. He additionally identified that the knowledge matches different open-source details about the place the 53rd’s affiliated items had been.
The affirmation that the brigade had been preventing in Izium could possibly be necessary to Ukrainian and Western prosecutors seeking to discover justice for attainable battle crimes, to not point out the households of the victims of MH17.
The connection between the 53rd Brigade and Malaysia Airways Flight 17 was first made by open-source investigators at Bellingcat.
Individually, a Joint Investigation Crew made up of a number of nations that misplaced residents as a result of downing of MH17 concluded after years of labor {that a} missile system provided by the 53rd Brigade was behind the crash.
Final month at The Hague, the Joint Investigation Crew introduced some last findings and provided beautiful new particulars. The investigators performed intercepted telephone calls of Russian-backed separatists that had been preventing in japanese Ukraine in 2014.
Utilizing these calls, investigators concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself was in the end behind the switch of an anti-aircraft system — the identical system that ultimately shot down Flight MH17. It underscored that the 53rd Brigade’s deadly actions had been at Putin’s path.
Russian-backed separatists within the space after the airplane crashed did not seem to point out remorse for the incident, in keeping with Russian army skilled Tom Bullock.
“There are a number of images discovered on their social media accounts displaying them posing subsequent to clutter from the plane, standing subsequent to the Malaysia Airways emblem and posing for images for his or her social media,” Bullock mentioned.
Piet Ploeg misplaced his brother, his brother’s spouse and their son on the airplane. His brother’s stays had been by no means recognized.
“I at all times say our relations had been, the truth is, the primary non-Ukrainian victims of a battle that began eight years in the past,” he mentioned. “So every little thing [that] provides us details about the position of Russia in Ukraine is, for us, necessary as a result of it helps us to type … world opinion concerning the position of Russia in Ukraine.”
The affirmation of the 53rd’s latest actions can also be necessary for folks like Silene Fredriksz, whose son was killed within the downing of MH17.
“Our lives modified fully. We had a household with 5 youngsters, and now they’re solely 4,” she mentioned. “And nothing, and no one, can fill within the gaps that they left. It hits you in each side of your life. I am not the identical individual as I used to be earlier than. It is a life earlier than and a life after. And it is very arduous. Nonetheless very arduous.”
She’s paid particular consideration to the 53rd and remains to be haunted by the unit’s lethal selections. Details about the unit and the Russian army’s actions assist her course of her grief.
“[I] watch every little thing that has something to do with the battle now occurring and every little thing that has to do with MH17, Russia, Ukraine,” she mentioned. “I’ll by no means have closure. … However after we get to know a part of the reality, [it] provides us relaxation.”
Shortly earlier than the publication of this story, President Vladimir Putin signed a brand new decree concerning the 53rd Brigade.
Apparently unconcerned about how it might look to the surface world, he ordered that the unit be given a brand new honorary designation: the title of “Guards,” a time period reserved for supposedly elite Russian items.
Topics: Ukraine, Russia, Aviation, Airlines, Malaysia, Russia-Ukraine War