http://rt.com/op-edge/179984-ukraine-malaysian-plane-investigation/
‘Western media neglect of Moscow’s MH17 evidence is shameful’
Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be reached on Twitter or at nilebowie@gmail.com
Published time: August 13, 2014 10:29
Nearly
one month has passed since Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down
over the skies of eastern Ukraine, taking the lives of 298 people.
An
international investigation is now underway, led by the Netherlands,
with members from Ukraine, Malaysia, the United States, Russia and
others.
Though
the team of investigators examining the crash site have yet to publish
their findings and assign culpability to the responsible party,
prominent media outlets have obediently toed the line of several Western
capitals with reports that all but categorically blame Russia for the
aircraft’s demise.
Journalistic
and analytical speculation cannot be avoided in such a tragic and
geopolitically-charged situation. Media outlets have a responsibility to
provide both critical commentary and impartial reporting to their
readers, but in the case of MH17, the lack of balance is breathtaking.
Those
parties who unreservedly pointed fingers at Moscow in the hours
immediately following the disaster have yet to make public any forensic
evidence that definitively implicates Russia with providing anti-Kiev
militias with the training or hardware needed to take down a commercial
airliner.
On
the other hand, Russia’s Defense Ministry has made available compelling
satellite images and military data that calls the Ukrainian
government’s official narrative of events into question. Moscow’s
findings have either been laxly underreported or dismissed as propaganda
by the West.
US
officials, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, made numerous media
appearances that were used to argue the Obama administration’s position
on MH17, that Moscow had directly trained and equipped rebels in eastern
Ukraine who carried out the attack.
To date, the White House has made available several satellite images that
support their version of the story. Moscow responded by pointing out
that the images released by Washington carried altered time-stamps that
indicate the images were taken in the days after the disaster.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also claimed that
the weather and lighting conditions in the US satellite images did not
correspond to the actual climate conditions at the time they were
allegedly recorded. US officials also declined to provide further
evidence over concerns that doing so would compromise Washington’s
intelligence-gathering capabilities.
US intelligence officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in the days following the tragedy flatly stated they
did not possess evidence to substantiate Russia’s involvement; they
also conceded that they did not know the identities or even the
nationalities of the culprits.
There
is a clear contradiction between the statements offered by US
intelligence officials and the narrative endorsed by the White House.
Washington continues to rely heavily on unverified and poorly sourced
social media content to validate its claims of Russian involvement.
Western
media outlets have hardly deviated from Washington’s narrative, while
their coverage has strongly assumed Russia’s culpability, despite the
wholly circumstantial nature of the evidence disclosed by the West. It
is farcical that the country known for overseeing the world’s most
sophisticated and far-reaching surveillance capabilities has sunk to
citing grainy YouTube videos to justify its policy decisions.
An investigative report recently
published by Robert Parry, the former Associated Press best known for
his coverage of the Iran-Contra scandal, cites American intelligence
analysts who suspect that Ukrainian armed forces were behind the attack.
Parry’s
intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that
the US intelligence community lacks any satellite imagery supporting the
White House’s allegations of Russian involvement, and that the only
surface-to-air missile system in that part of Ukraine appeared to be
under the control of the Ukrainian military.
Neither
Washington or Kiev have released images of a Buk missile system being
transferred by Russia to rebel-controlled areas of Ukraine, where
several high-level Ukrainian officials allege it was fired from before
being taken back into Russia.
The
claims made by Parry’s US intelligence sources have been corroborated
by military monitoring data made available by Russia’s Defense Ministry,
which detected radiation from Kiev-controlled missile batteries at the
time of the MH17 downing.
Moscow has made available satellite images that
purport to show Ukrainian air defense units deployed in the
southeastern parts of the country near rebel-held territory during the
time of the crash. Kiev’s concentration of multiple missile batteries in
the region is highly suspect because the rebels they are fighting do
not possess aircraft.
Russia has also claimed that
it tracked a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet flying in close proximity to
the aircraft prior to it disappearing from radar. Parry’s article claims
that US intelligence analysts believe that the Ukrainian military
missile battery system and the government’s fighter jets may have been
operated in collusion to bring down the aircraft.
A report published last
week in the New Straits Times, Malaysia’s flagship English-language
newspaper, cited forensic experts who believed that the blast
fragmentation patterns on the aircraft’s fuselage were consistent with
that of cannon rounds from an air-to-air assault.
The
Malaysian report included testimony from Michael Bociurkiw, a
Ukrainian-Canadian monitor from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who claimed that the fuselage had been
pockmarked with machinegun fire. Retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko
was also cited in the report, remarking that a surface-fired missile
alone could not have created entry points on both the port and starboard
sides of the aircraft.
Olga
Ivshina, a correspondent with BBC’s Russian language service,
interviewed local eyewitnesses who told her that they saw military
aircraft in the sky flying beneath MH17 before the incident, only
intensifying suspicions of Ukrainian involvement. Ivshina’s video
dispatch was hastily removed from BBC’s website, which claimed her
report didn’t meet editorial standards.
The
coverage presented to audiences by Western media outlets has been
framed in lockstep with official positions of Western governments, and
there is conspicuous and unmistakable effort by these media giants to
keep ‘unwanted’ facts and testimony out of the discussion.
In
light of the evidence brought forward by the Russian side – as well as
the questions raised by credible journalists and investigators – the
Dutch-led international investigation team should request that Kiev
produce raw military radar data and missile battery logs recorded at the
time of the disaster.
Recordings
of Ukrainian air-traffic control’s correspondence with the doomed
aircraft should also be made available for public scrutiny. If the
international investigation is truly concerned with impartiality, it
must objectively scrutinize the evidence on offer and pressure
intelligence agencies and governments to substantiate their allegations
and disclose the facts.
The
statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
No comments:
Post a Comment