Our response to the “British scientists”
Not long ago, a report from the Bellingcat online community was posted online on the crash of Malaysian flight MH17 in the skies over Donbass. Experts by the name of no one can be called nowadays, like uncut dogs, and everyone, like Asimov’s hermit doctor Wendell Earth, strives to tear the veils off the mystery, revealing a resonant and complicated case without getting off the couch.
So in the case of flight MH17, the Bellingcat group, relying on videos from Youtube and a selection of photographs from the Internet, with all the passion of an idle layman, began to pull an owl onto the globe, proving Russia’s guilt in the Boeing crash. As a result, the “onalites” come to the firm conclusion that the missile that shot down the airliner came from the Snezhnoye region, from the territory of the LPR militia, and was fired by a Buk-M1 air defense system from the Russian air defense forces.
It would seem, what's the matter? After all, mosquito baldness is not worth a penny: the investigation is carried out by housewives - don’t care and forget. You can’t throw a scarf over every mouth. But this is not the case with Bellingcat. Former accountant from Great Britain Elliot Higgins, who in a short time turned from an ordinary whistleblower blogger into a “ruler of thoughts”, on the wave of popularity from previous “investigations”, put together an international group of like-minded people of about 20 people, producing tons of interpretations, compilations and other brain juice, seriously sucking on the materials posted on the Internet. Things have reached the point where the opinion of Higgins’ “expert” group is now readily cited by popular publications, and organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch willingly use their findings for their own speculative and manipulative needs.
Therefore, Bellingcat found its own Anti-Bellingcat - a group of Russian volunteers who undertook to prove that the Higgins group launched a fake. And in order not to be unfounded, a specialist was invited for a “debriefing” - an adviser to the general designer of the Almaz-Antey concern, Mikhail Malyshevsky.
The first acquaintance with the Bellingcat report showed that all the sources mentioned in the text are extremely dubious, and if desired, the materials from them can be interpreted in any way. Photographs, which should reflect important moments and would allow for a firm identification of objects and events, are poorly defined and have low resolution. But all the unintelligible nonsense that is not relevant to the matter is filmed with surprisingly high quality. The same goes for video materials.
Let's start by praying. Bellingcat's tricks and their subsequent exposure by Anti-Bellingcat.
F1. A contrail supposedly left by a missile fired at a target. As evidence, a photograph of a clean, clear sky and a footprint is provided.
P1. The photograph was taken without reference to time or location. It does not follow from anything that the rocket was launched from the Snezhnoye area. In addition, according to weather services, it was cloudy over the disaster area at that time, and there was a haze above the ground. Visibility is insufficient to see the contrail. The weather conditions are reflected in the report of the international commission. In addition, it is impossible to find the author of the photographs cited by Bellingcat.
Presumably, the photograph shows the trace of a Tochka-U tactical missile. A single launch of a Smerch MLRS missile is also not excluded.
F2. Changing the flight route of the airliner is an invention of the Russian Ministry of Defense. In fact, MH17 was traveling along a pre-established international flight corridor.
P2. The report of the international commission noted that MH17 flew around the cloud zone and deviated from the axis of the international corridor. This is confirmed by transcripts of conversations between the crew and Ukrainian dispatchers. Due to weather conditions, the crew requested permission to deviate from the route.
F3. "Buk-M1" Russian, delivered near Snezhnoye via route
Kursk – Voronezh – Rostov – Donetsk – Makeevka – Torez – Snezhnoye.
Exported through Lugansk. The proof is a video recording by blogger Belenky, posted on July 17, 2014: a convoy with a Buk passes by a gas station in Makeyevka.
P3. Even the SBU very quickly refused to refer to this fake. Can't make out the number of the self-propelled launcher. You can’t make out whether it’s a Buk in the video or something else with the dimensions of a Buk.
And the softest. In the video, in the gas station area, a Buk is allegedly being transported on good asphalt. The date is July 16, 2014. But here’s the problem: on July 15, the same place near the gas station was accidentally captured by Hot News reporters - the road was plowed with the tracks of armored vehicles. What is not surprising is that the front line passed nearby. What does this mean? Someone went out of their way and urgently rolled out fresh asphalt in a war zone?
F4. Evacuation of the Buk through Lugansk. One person provided the recording to a Western correspondent and thus the recording fell into the hands of Bellingcat.
P4. Typical information from the news agency One Baba Said.
The falsifiers couldn’t even really agree on where One Baba saw this notorious “Buk”. At first it was named Krasnodon. Then they changed their minds and chose Lugansk.
Night. Street. Flashlight. An advertising board and a column of cars with a Buk. A bright light is visible from behind the billboard. At this time, Lugansk was subjected to massive artillery attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The power grid was destroyed and the city was plunged into darkness. Scraps of wires and trolleybus contact lines hung to the ground. There is plenty of evidence. The only sources of light were candles and some generators from the population. In any case, there was no urgent need to illuminate the billboard.
In turn, Bellingcat promptly responded to Mikhail Malyshevsky’s material about the missile’s destructive elements, which proves the amateurism of the “onalitegs.” And as an argument, Higgins’ group resorted to an outright lie, declaring that, allegedly, “Almaz-Antey” itself had previously confirmed the presence of destructive elements in the form of I-beams, but now refused.
In fact, Almaz-Antey did not confirm anything and did not refuse anything. Experts simply commented on the data from the examination of fragments from the Dutch side. The Dutch did not provide the fragment to our specialists and did not conduct a full metallurgical study of it. They only identified some of its components, without even identifying the grade of metal. But you can’t make a fur coat out of this and you can’t tie it to a specific product.
Now, the Dutch, at the instigation of Bellingcat, are trying to stretch the facts, building a version that the missile that brought down MH17 arrived on a collision course. That is, from the Snezhnoye region. At the same time, other facts obtained as a result of engineering analysis are ignored, and from the conclusions of Almaz-Antey, sent to the international commission, only those materials are pulled out that fit directly into the line of accusations against Russia. Moreover, with Bellingcat, if something happens, bribes are smooth - its “xperds” do not have any official status. We just helped respected people a little in the information war. Business, nothing personal.
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Now the editors are aware.