Global Research

Image: MH17, a crime pinned on Russia

This month marks the one year anniversary of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 – an incident that took place against a backdrop of a brutal proxy war – pitting Kiev and its supporters in Washington DC, the EU and NATO – against rebel forces in eastern Ukraine and Russia. As with most 21^st century conflicts, truth has been the first casualty of war here.

On July 17, 2014, flight MH17 traveling east from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – crashed near the village of Grabovo, and on the outskirts of the town of Torez just outside of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, approximately 40 km from the Ukrainian-Russian border.

To call this situation volatile would almost be an understatement. A pivotal event such as this could easily be used as a pretext for escalating not only a New Cold War between the West and Russia, but also a hot war. Only six months previously, the Ukraine found itself in the throes of a western-backed coup d’état in Kiev which tore the country apart. This was quickly followed by a snap referendum in Crimea, where voters opted for secession from the Ukraine and into the relatively secure arms of the Russian Federation. The west cried foul and so began a new grudge match. Arguably, tensions between the west and Moscow have been at their highest since the apex of the Cold War during the east-west Soviet era. Needless to say, with MH17 the stakes could not be any higher, and regarding the west, it was obvious who would be assigned the blame for this tragedy.

More than any other incident, this one was flushed out firstly through public relations channels, and then secondly through official government bodies. From the onset the West took its position by claiming it had “proof” that ‘Russian-backed rebels’ were responsible for shooting down the passenger airliner. Immediately after the incident took place, the western government-media complex insisted that the murder weapon was a Russian-made BUK Surface to Air Missile system.

Western mainstream media outlets wasted no time in disseminating this government-issued conspiracy theory, backed-up by a number of other clams of “evidence” coming out of the Washington-backed regime in Kiev. At the time, US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to have a“mountain of evidence” convicting ‘pro-Russian separatists’ and Moscow. Unfortunately, Kerry’s mountain was no more than a mole hill. Nearly all of those claims have since been debunked and exposed as fraudulent – but from a public opinion perspective, the damage was already done.

Within 48 hours, News Corp and other pro-war rags ran a series of loaded headlines including, “Putin’s Missile”, “Putin’s Victims” and “From Vlad to Worse”. Vladimir Putin and his government in Russia were already convicted in the Kangaroo court of public opinion under the guise of guilt by association with Russian-speaking rebels fighting Kiev’s military forces in the east.

However, upon closer examination of the facts surrounding this case, an alternative set of conclusions can be drawn from this event – one which points to the very strong possibility that what the world really witnessed last year was a classic ‘false flag’ event – an attempted slight-of-hand bit of military trickery designed to cast blame on one party for a crime that was really committed by another. It wouldn’t be the first time that this type of sub-plot was put into motion to advance a world power’s geopolitical objectives.

Revelation of the Method: A ‘False Flag’ Attack

The term false flag, or “black flag”, is most common in naval battles, and describes the historic covert, military use of a flag other than the perpetrator’s true flag colors as a type of ruse de guerre – designed to deceive and confuse in order to provide a fake ‘moral high ground’ in the theater of mass public opinion.

The classic blueprint for MH17 was not dreamt-up by Russian war planners, but by the Pentagon – over 50 years earlier. A clandestine plan known as Operation Northwoods, was similarly conjured in 1962 by the US Department of Defense’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the CIA in front of a Cold War backdrop pitting the United States against then Soviet ally Cuba, led by Fidel Castro. The plan was signed off by then JCS Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and detailed how spooks would use prepositioned explosives to blow-up a passenger airliner over Cuba, blaming it on Cuba and by extension – Washington’s arch-nemesis the Soviet Union. This ‘false flag’ attack would then be used as valuable leverage in a global public opinion campaign against Washington’s existential and ideological enemies. They also talked about developing a “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington”. Fortunately, the deceptive plot was eventually rejected by the Kennedy administration.

It’s important to note that had the US been successful in framing Moscow for the downing of MH17 in 2014, it would have given Washington a bright green light to intensify its efforts in destabilizing neighboring Ukraine, and later in Georgia, then in Estonia, and so on. As the MH17 false flag began to crumble, so did any prospects of a Washington geopolitical takeover in the region.

Arguably, Washington DC and its allies attempted a similar geopolitical frame-up only one year earlier in August 2013 in Syria. What we now know to be a false flag chemical weapons attack took place in Ghutta, a suburb located on the outskirts of Damascus. The plan was simple: create a chemical or ‘WMD’ event to coincide with the visiting of UN weapons inspectors in Damascus and blame it on the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Once international outrage and blame could be established, then a US-led ‘Coalition’ would carry out yet another oxymoronic ‘humanitarian’ military intervention against Syria, topple the regime and then work on installing a US-compliant government there. It almost happened. Had the British Parliament passed a war resolution in early September, then the US would have had the green light to begin bombing – risking another potential world war in the process.

In the end it was Russia who quickly supplied the solution: a UN monitored disposal of all of the Syrian military’s aging chemical weapons stocks – and thus removing any future change by the US or Britain to fabricate another ‘WMD’ indictment against the Assad regime in Syria. That master chess move was down to Russia’s dab-handed foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and it was a masterstroke which may have helped to avoid a wider world war.

The Case

Tracing the whereabouts of MH17 during its final moments is of great importance if one is to determine what happened and why. For this reason, a number of key data sets and important information and testimonies have been buried – not by Russia and Russian-speaking rebels in the east Ukraine, but rather by US and European stakeholders as well as obscured by the entirety of the western corporate media.

We know that a Malaysian Airlines spokesman has already confirmed that, for some unknown reason, Kiev-based Ukrainian Air Traffic Control (ATC) ordered MH17 off of its original flight path along the international air route, known as L980. Most likely, this order was given to pilots while MH17 was still in Polish air space. L980 is one of the most popular and most congested air routes in the world, as well as a key link between major international hubs in Europe, like London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, and Asian destinations, like Singapore, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. As MH17 moved into Ukrainian air space, it was moved by ATC Kiev approximately 200 miles north – putting it on a new course, heading directly into a war zone, a well-known dangerous area by now – one that hosted a number of downed military craft over the previous 3 weeks.

Robert Mark, a commercial pilot and editor of Aviation International News Safety magazine, confirmed that most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur would normally travel along a route significantly further south than the route MH17 was diverted onto. Data on these and other similar flights can be found at the website Flight Radar24.¹

The plot (or the cover-up) thickens even more at this point, as publically available data appears to have been changed in the weeks following the incident. In the days after the crash, popular microblogger Vagellis Karmiros showed MH17’s clear change of course over the warzone to the north from compiling flight location and route data publically available on the website FlightAware. Karmiros’s findings were even featured in an infographic in the UK’s Daily Mail at the time.² 

The digital smoking gun: Then approximately six days after the crash, the information on popular publicly accessible flight tracking websites like FlightAware and FlightRadar24 appear to have been altered – to give the impression that all recent MH17 flights had gone over the Donetsk war zone too – effectively erasing the possibility that the plane’s flight path had been altered by Air Traffic Control in the first instance.³ The following is a screenshot from FlightAware, of MH17 on the day of the incident, July 17, 2014, where the doomed journey came to an abrupt halt over the village of Grabovo, in eastern Ukraine. Notice the flight path along a trajectory north of Crimea:

Below are a set of five different FlightAware screenshots which originally showed how MH17’s normal route was approximately 200 miles south of its fatal kill zone on July 17th, 2014. Here are four samples: MH17 flight path for July 12, 2014 – Original data available in the immediate days following the crash:

MH17 ‘new’ flight path for July 12, 2014 – since changed approximately 6-7 days after the crash:

MH17 flight path for July 13, 2014 – Original data available in the immediate days following the crash:

MH17 ‘new’ flight path for July 13, 2014 – since changed approximately 6-7 days after the crash:

MH17 flight path for July 14, 2014 – Original data available in the immediate days following the crash:

MH17 ‘new’ flight path for July 14, 2014 – since changed approximately 6-7 days after the crash:

MH17 flight path for July 15, 2014 – Original data available in the immediate days following the crash:

MH17 ‘new’ flight path for July 15, 2014 – since changed from approximately 6-7 days after the crash:

Were these flight paths changed, and if so, why? Again, the obvious motive here is misdirection. By altering the public-facing flight path data of MH17 after the fact would be to cloud the realization that MH17’s fateful path on July 17, 2014 was NOT it’s normal flight path – and thus halting any further inquiry as to exactly who diverted MH17 and why. According to these revised images, that appears to be exactly what has been attempted here. Was FlightAware hacked and the flight path data altered? The answer to this question might help lead to finding out whether or not we are in fact witnessing a very elaborate cover-up here. The Missing Tapes So what about the air traffic control tapes? These could easily provide the information investigators need to establish the who, what, when, whereand why of MH17’s doomed journey. The BBC reported on July 17th:

Ukraine’s SBU security service has confiscated recordings of conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the doomed airliner, a source in Kiev has told Interfax news agency.⁴

Were the ATC audio records of the MH17 flight confiscated by the Kiev government? No reason has been given for this loss of transparency, but not a word from Washington regarding this cover-up of crucial evidence. Did the order to change the flight path come from the Ukrainian authorities? Was the pilot instructed to change course? To be sure, the order to change the flight path did not come from Eurocontrol, but more likely from ATC in Kiev. Undoubtedly, this is the most obvious smoking gun that the fix was in for MH17 – as someone directed the flight directly over a war zone. Mainstream pundits and investigators have gone to great lengths to conceal this single most damning piece of evidence which should indicate that there is a running cover-up surrounding this incident. Soon after the incident, British news outlets began floating the story – without evidence, that MH17 was diverted to “avoid thunderstorms in southern Ukraine”. This was also placed on Wikipedia at the same time.⁵ Nico Voorbach, Dutch president of the ‘European Cockpit Association’, appears to be the man used to nudge along this talking point. Voorbach casually slides this crucial fabrication out there, telling The Guardian, of all papers, “I heard that MH17 was diverting from some showers as there were thunderclouds”. The only problem is that Malaysian Airlines immediately refuted this in a report from Malaysia News:

“MAS operations director Captain Izham Ismail has also refuted claims that heavy weather led to MH17 changing its flight plan (…) There were no reports from the pilot to suggest that this was the case,” Izham said. ⁶

What is significant, however, is that the Western media acknowledged that the change in the flight path did occur, indicating that the alleged “heavy weather” narrative is a fabrication designed to distract and obscure the fact that MH17’s course was indeed diverted directly into the war zone that day. Amazingly, when searching all weather sites online, there is no weather data available for July 17^th in the area of the incident. What? More digital chicanery to cover-up the truth? Weather and Visibility Factor Another argument can be made that Kiev-based air traffic controllers not only led MH17 right over its alleged ‘target zone’ in Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, but they also helped make it both visible to SAM missiles and to fighter jets. Although weather data online is all but unavailable for the area of Donetsk, Ukraine for July 17th, conditions are evident by numerous videos depicting the crash and crash site in the aftermath — it was cloudy and overcast, with more visibility above the cloud canopy. This factor is important because at its cruising altitude of approximately 33,000 feet (10,000 meters), the airliner would not be visible from the ground in the rebel-held area where Washington is insisting a SAM missile was launched. Why Kiev air traffic controllers order MH17 to suddenly drop its altitude, from 35,000 feet to around 33,000 feet, just before the plane’s demise is unknown for sure, but it would have been near impossible for the alleged rebel gunman occupying this relatively small rebel-held patch of land to make a visual sighting of MH17 and acquire the target during the 1-2 minute window they would have had (assuming they were even in possession of the BUK missile system). The following are some fresh footage and eyewitness reports from the scene of the crash:

The Takedown Washington’s fragile ‘conspiracy theory’ quickly fell apart. Russian officials blindsided Washington and its NATO partners when it released all available satellite imagery and air traffic control data which was recorded in and around the final minutes of Flight MH17 – and presented it to the world media on live television. The data painted a very different picture, drawing contrasting conclusions to what Washington and Kiev officials had been disseminating via western media since July 17th. Following their presentation, Moscow handed its findings – air traffic data and time stamped satellite imagery – to European authorities. In stark contrast, US officials were reluctant to do the same – despite numerous cock-sure claims by high-ranking US officials including Secretary of State John Kerry. On Monday July 21st, the Russian government, with almost every major global media outlet in attendance, released all of its air traffic data and satellite imaging data – all verifiable, including time stamps and supporting data. The entire content of the presentation was also handed over to the European authorities. Watch the official broadcast here:

The conclusions to be drawn from this are stunning, to say the least. Despite the public release of this information, US and British media outlets did not bother to report back to its people on these findings. They are as follows: Minutes before the downing of MH17, the plane made a mysterious ‘Left Turn‘ as it flew over the Donetsk area at approximately 17:20:00 Moscow Time, making a sharp 14km deviation, before attempting to regain its previous course before dropping altitude and disappearing from radar at 17:23:00. As we previously pointed out, air traffic controllers in Kiev had already diverted MH17 200 miles further north into the target zone, so the question remains: was Kiev ATC also responsible for this final, fatal diversion, or was there another reason for this unusual turn? According to clear satellite images provided, on July 16th, the Ukrainian Army positioned 3-4 anti-aircraft BUK M1 SAM missile batteries close to Donetsk. These systems included full launching, loading and radio location units, located in the immediate vicinity of the MH17 crash site. One system was placed approximately 8km northwest of Lugansk. In addition, a radio location system for these Ukrainian Army missile batteries is situated 5km north of Donetsk. On July 17th, the day of the incident, these batteries were moved to a position 8km south of Shahktyorsk. In addition to this, two other radio location units are also identified in the immediate vicinity. These SAM systems had a range of 35km distance, and 25km altitude. From July 18th, after the downing of MH17, Kiev’s BUK launchers were then moved away from the firing zone.

This is another definitive smoking gun: why did the Ukrainian Army move these short-range anti-aircraft SAM missile batteries into position on July 16-17th – to an interior region of East Ukraine where it’s known that the rebel resistance possess no air crafts whatsoever? Not surprisingly, both the US and Kiev have not answered that difficult question, perhaps for obvious reasons. Most importantly however, Moscow radar picked up a Ukrainian Air Force fighter jet. At 17:20 Moscow Time, MH17 began to abruptly lose speed, eventually slowing to 124mph (200kmph). At that moment, what appears to be an SU-25 Ukrainian fighter jet appears on ATC radar, climbing in the direction of MH17 before trailing MH17 on the same flight path approximately 3-5km behind the passenger airliner, as it began rapidly approaching the same flight level. This happened just minutes before MH17 disappeared on radar. Note here that a Ukrainian fighter would not have been visible on ATC radar before it broke the ATC long-range standby radar tracking ceiling of 5km in altitude. Civilian ATC radar would not be able to identify this Su-25 as military because no secondary detection system is mounted – typical for military aircraft. Over the next four minutes, the Ukrainian fighter remained in the area. Note also that the Su-25 can be armed with air-to-air R-60 missiles with a range of up to 5km-12km. Washington’s Revised Conspiracy Theory In a damage control exercise, US State Department spokesperson Marie Harf, called an ‘urgent’ press conference. The plan was to try and rescue the narrative. The Los Angeles Times reported:

U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.⁷

The quiet U-turn by Washington signaled that its previous case blaming the rebels has been destroyed, and rather than concede that the Ukrainian Army has actually shot down MH17, they instead tried to concoct a revision about an unlikely Bond-like “rogue defector” villain and his “rogue team” – who all just happened to be wearing Ukrainian Army uniforms.

Even Hollywood’s best script writers could not rescue Washington’s terminally over-worked MH17 narrative.

The Crash Site

Most importantly, but completely overlooked by analysts following this story is the location (s) of the crash site itself. The scatter patterns of debris, along with the arguing which ensued between international bodies and the Donbass Rebels in east Ukraine – speaks volumes about a false flag master plan gone wrong.

The Boeing 777-200ER airliner lost contact at about 10 km before the eventual crash site. The fatal event occurred somewhere in the interval between 17:21:28 and 17:22:30 Moscow Time. The exact time of the crash is believed to be at 17:23:00.

Had the plane been shot down further east, and crashed some 30-40 miles southeast of its eventual grave, then the Ukrainian Army would have had complete control of the crash site, the evidence, as well as the flight data recorder ‘blackboxes’. As luck would have it, Kiev and Washington were not afforded the luxury of being able to hermetically seal off the crime scene – and thus completely control the narrative. For whatever reason, the plane was shot down too early, placing the wreckage along with the all-important black boxes in the wrong place – all of which made the false flag narrative slightly more complicated to sell than operation planners had originally intended (theoretically anyway).

The Investigation That Wasn’t

Once again, Russia’s impressive chess move by presenting all of their satellite and radar data in the immediate aftermath of the crash may very well have helped to avoid a major international conflagration.

With the egg still drying on their faces, western mandarins shifted into PR damage-control mode. In a massive face-saving exercise, much was made in the western media and in high-powered political circles about the need for a “thorough and fair investigation into MH17”. Any chance of that happening quickly died once the flight data recorders were handed over to British authorities for safe keeping at the UK’s Air Accidents Investigative Branch located in Farnborough, England. It’s been nearly one year now since the aircraft’s black boxes were placed into the hands of British authorities and it seems as if any further factual inquiries into what really happened that day have hit the wall. After Russia’s data dump there is simply no chance that the ‘Russian-backed’ Rebels could be framed for the disaster, so NATO’s intelligentsia have little choice other than to simply sit on the evidence indefinitely.

It seems that the biggest losers are still the victims’ families. In December 2014, the Netherlands rejected families’ demands to allow the UN to take over from Dutch leading the investigation, as relatives claim the Dutch have “completely botched” the case by failing to meet basic international CSI protocol for securing evidence, as well as their inability to build a legal case to prosecute those responsible. As a leading NATO member with a clear stake in the Ukrainian civil war, the Netherlands can hardly consider themselves as a neutral arbitrator in the case. This is a good example of what happens to false flags once they reach the legal phase – when all of the previous hype and inertia generating through break-neck media speculation and wild political hyperbole – comes to a grinding halt in the face of the facts.

This past week saw the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) release its ‘preliminary findings’ in a new report which claims to have identified a “Russian BUK Missile” launcher as the smoking gun, as well as blaming Malaysian Airlines for being ‘sloppy’ in its professional conduct by “not doing enough” to prevent its plane from flying over the deadly war zone. Far from fact-based, both citations by the DSB amount to nothing more than gross speculation and wild theorizing. To call it an investigation is laughable.

Western media pundits have also been working overtime to characterize the DSB as a neutral arbitrator who is also apolitical, and a “meticulous”, honest broker. As a leading member of NATO, the Netherlands are anything but neutral and for anyone to suggest that that is truly the case would be both naive, and worse – ignorant – considering how NATO has managed to leverage the west’s fictional account of MH17 in order to fund and arm the Ukrainian military, as well as begin its recent unprecedented, break-neck expansion eastward right up to Russia’s border.

They claim that their final “definitive report” will be released sometime in the fall – but few in the know will be holding their breath, as this one looks like it has all the makings of a protracted exercise in obfuscation designed to stay as far away from any conclusive investigation as possible, and allowing for continuing political pressure on Moscow via the original blame game.

The disinformation merry-go-round

Who needs evidence when you have social media instead? The week following the downing of MH17, Washington deployed its front-of-house asset, US ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt (image, left), in its endless running fabricated social media campaign designed to somehow convince the world (or at least naive US media consumers) that the Russian military were occupying eastern Ukraine. Here, his damning tweet would implicate Russia for “firing artillery over its border into the Ukraine.” As cheap stunts went, this was one of the lowest ever. It turns out that Pyatt had simply grabbed a series of images off of the Google World-style satellite mapping website Digital Globe, while proudly touting it as “evidence” of Russian artillery fired into eastern Ukraine. This sort of media buffoonery has since become par for the course ever since the neoconservative faction led by Victoria Nuland managed to seize control of the US State Department in 2013. Here is Pyatt’s ‘evidence’ as it appeared last summer:

Pyatt’s Twitter gaff was part of an “disinformation merry-go-round” currently on heavy rotation in Kiev. Unlike the all-too-eager media drones in the US and Europe, Russian officials have been able to explain the mechanics of the Washington-Kiev fiction mill:

This scheme is called ‘an informational merry-go-round’,” Konashenkov added, using an expression commonly uttered in Russia relating to feeding the information to the media.

“It’s no secret to anyone that fakes like this are made by a group of US counselors staying in the Kiev building of the Security Council, led by General Randy Kee,” he noted.

The general outlined the cycle as follows: the US counselors in Kiev feed the disinformation to the Ukrainian media, with the news being taken by the Washington official representatives and presented as statements.

Afterwards, Washington’s stage-managed Ukrainian media outlet’s immediately cited the US Ambassador’s flimsy findings and published numerous articles as labeled as “objective” reporting on alleged Russian military movements inside Ukrainian territory.

Opportunity and Motive

Considering the military conflict which was taking place in eastern Ukraine at the time, there are three uncomfortable coincidences (or realities) that were prevailing before the downing of MH17 on July 17th.

Firstly, the crash was also timed with an all-out Ukrainian Military offensive which was planned weeks in advance and was set to begin on July 18th. Secondly, it was widely reported that the troops were losing morale, and were suffering defections in an increasingly unpopular military theater of Eastern Ukraine. Kiev was losing the PR war hearts and minds in the Ukraine and abroad. Lastly, following the downing of MH17, Kiev was again characterized as a victim of “Russian aggression” and went on to garner huge public sympathy and support.

In the weeks leading up to July 17th, NATO, led by the US, conducted two large-scale military and intelligence drills in the Black Sea region. The first was an annual affair named, SEA BREEZE 2014, which just so happened to end on… July 17th. The drill included hundreds of US military specialists running ‘war simulations’ in electronic warfare, data collection from a spy satellite, and ‘monitoring’ of all passenger aircraft flying in the region. In addition, both US and British armed forces had also scheduled a concurrent military exercise code named, Rapid Trident 2014, another NATO sanctioned international drill which takes place around the Ukraine, which, according to the US Forces in Europe website, is supposed to “promote regional stability and security, strengthen partnership capacity and foster trust while improving interoperability between the land forces of Ukraine, and NATO and partner nations.” Since March, the Pentagon has kept quiet regarding the number of US forces, and hardware assets expected to participate in the maneuvers. According to US Army spokesman Col. Steven Warren, Rapid Trident is the only Ukraine military exercise the US planned to participate in this year, and it’s main purpose was, “To help the Ukrainian military improve its troops and weapons operability with NATO forces.”

Just another coincidence.

Eye in the Sky

Here’s yet another smoking gun. The US had deployed its latest state-of-the-art, experimental satellite which just happened to be positioned over Eastern Europe for 1-2 hours, and directly over Donetsk in eastern Ukraine between 5:06pm – 5:21pm – the exact time frame in which MH17 was shot down.

Did the US know something was happening in advance? It certainly seems so. Will the US ever release the information it clearly has documenting the MH17 disaster? Probably never.

MH17 Endgame: International Sanctions

Clearly, war planners in Washington are determined to fabricate a case against Russia in order to enable either of these two outcomes:

1. Create a ‘global’ mandate for wider international sanctions against Russia.
2. Create a UN Security Council Crisis by implicating Russia via an “international violation”.

In retrospect, the primary endgame of framing Moscow for the downed passenger airliner was to impose international sanctions against Russia. It’s crucial to note here that the west’s continued determination in blaming rebels in eastern Ukraine for MH17, and by extension Moscow, seems necessary in order to maintain the facade which was the original basis for their sanctions regime against Russia.

Unlike Washington, the European economies have suffered greatly from sanctions against Russia, hitting Germany, France and Spain exports particularly hard at a time when when an already fragile Eurozone is teetering on the edge of disaster. If the truth about MH17 were ever to be revealed, and thus shattering the cheap narrative constructed by Washington’s conflict marketing department last year, the political blow-back from Europe’s leading economies would be substantial, with America’s allies demanding some sort of quid pro quo to cover their own shortfalls.

Shameless Cheap Shot

In the aftermath of the tragedy, a number of unscrupulous politicians sought to score what they thought were easy points against Russian president Vladimir Putin. Topping that list of shameless actors is none other than Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott (image, left), who threatened to “shirt-front” Putin over the issue ahead of the G20 Summit hosted by Australia last November. When Putin arrived, Abbott bottled, and revised his rhetoric to asking the Russian leader for an apology and also financial compensation for MH17 victims’ families – even though there was absolutely no evidence to even suggest that Russia had anything to do with the crash.

Towing the NATO line, as ever, Abbott then invited Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to visit Australia at a later date to “discuss security.”

A Symbolic Date

In terms of Russian history, there is not a more symbolic date than July 17th. This was also the date on which the Russian Imperial Romanov family led by Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children and other persons – were awoken at 2:00am and assassinated by firing squad in the early hours of 17 July 1918. Wikipedia recounts:

“Present with Nicholas, Alexandra and their children were their doctor and three of their servants, who had voluntarily chosen to remain with the family—the Tsar’s personal physician Eugene Botkin, his wife’s maid Anna Demidova, and the family’s chef, Ivan Kharitonov, and footman, Alexei Trupp. A firing squad had been assembled and was waiting in an adjoining room, composed of seven Communist soldiers from Central Europe, and three local Bolsheviks, all under the command of Bolshevik officer Yakov Yurovsky.”

Conclusion

Russia’s public satellite ‘data dump’ on July 21, 2014 was certainly a game changer – effectively snookering Washington and Kiev. The existence of this intelligence means that, for fear of losing face on the issue, Washington and its NATO partners cannot present any real intelligence – which they also have in their possession.

In an attempt to save face, western governmental bodies will now likely stop short of issuing any definitive statements as they already had last summer, of accusing either Donbass Rebels or Moscow of actually shooting down MH17.

The only remaining option to nudge their PR agenda foward, is to continue with the campaign of endless innuendos and other slanderous remarks in the media sphere using nongovernmental agencies and war advocacy think tanks. During its news package this week on the latest Dutch Safety Board report, CNN featured Heather Conley (image, left) a senior VP from theCenter for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. Conley crowed that somehow the report was another “blow to Vladimir Putin’s credibility.” Naturally, the irony is lost on Washington.

One year on, and we’re still no closer to closure, and very far from justice regarding the case of MH17. Expect more cover-ups and misdirection from western authorities who fear any new evidence that may threaten the narrative they were aggressively canvassing in the immediately aftermath of the last year’s tragedy.

Meanwhile, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard and the aged old battle to control Euraisa’s Heartland continues…

Additional footnotes

1. flightradar24.com
2. twitter.com
3. flightaware.com
4. bbc.com
5. Nico Voorbach, President, European Cockpit Association
6. news.malaysia.msn.com
7. latimes.com