MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian state-controlled missile-maker said Tuesday its investigation of last year’s crash of a Malaysia Airlines plane over rebel eastern Ukraine contradicts conclusions from a Dutch probe.
Ukraine and Western countries contend the airliner was downed by a missile fired by Russia-backed rebels or Russian forces from rebel-controlled territory on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.
The Dutch investigation into the crash of flight MH17 is to be made public later Tuesday, but a draft report was presented to Russia and other governments in July.
A statement from the Almaz-Antey arms-maker said the Dutch draft found that the plane, a Boeing 777 belonging to Malaysia Airlines, was shot down by a Buk missile warhead that uses submunitions shaped like a capital letter I.
However, Almaz-Antey says it conducted two experiments — in one of which a Buk missile was detonated near the nose of an airplane similar to a 777 — that contradict that conclusion.
The experimental aircraft’s remains showed a much different submunitions damage pattern than seen on the remnants of MH17, the company said in a statement.
The experiments also refute what it said was the Dutch version, that the missile was fired from Snizhne, a village that was under rebel control. An Associated Press reporter saw a Buk missile system in that vicinity on the same day.
Almaz-Antey in June had said that a preliminary investigation suggested that the plane was downed by a model of Buk that is no longer in service with the Russian military but that was part of the Ukrainian military arsenal.
Information from the first experiment, in which a missile was fired at aluminum sheets mimicking an airliner’s fuselage, was presented to the Dutch investigators, but was not taken into account, Almaz-Antey chief Yan Novikov said at a news conference.
Novikov said evidence shows that if the plane was hit by a Buk, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske, which Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the draft report said the plane was destroyed by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired from the village of Snizhne; the official who was not authorized to comment publicly, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Many reports, including an investigation by the open-source group Bellingcat, also suggest the plane was downed by a missile fired from near Snizhne.
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Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I call bullshizne on the Almaz-Antey report.
Trust us comrades! We would never lie to the workers!
We absolutely deny that the plane was hit by a Buk missile.
But if it was, it most certainly was an older model we Russians no longer use, but of couse we absolutely deny that the plane was hit by a Buk missile.
Novikov said evidence shows that if the plane was hit by a Buk, it was fired from the village of Zaroshenske, which Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time, but of couse we absolutely deny that the plane was hit by a Buk missile.
Sounds like a four-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
OF COURSE, it was a Russian missle fired by Russians from Russian-held positions.
The problem with countries that control their own media, after a while they forget that the whole world doesn’t buy into their BS.
No, they know that the rest of the world doesn’t accept this bullshit. But that isn’t what it is for. Producing any evidence no matter how laughable allows them to deny that Russian troops shot down a civilian plane.
And yes, it was Russian troops, not ‘rebels’. Do you really think they would give heavy artillery costing millions to people who haven’t been trained to use it when they have thousands of their own men there?
Now my goodness, I wonder why I find the Dutch more credible on this than the Russians?