When Russia-Backed Forces Boasted They Shot Down A Ukrainian Military Plane…That Was Actually MH17

The wreckage of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was still smoldering in the countryside of eastern Ukraine, the remains of the 298 people aboard strewn across several kilometers of rolling fields of wheat and sunflowers, when Russian media began relaying news of a downed plane in the area.

“A fresh victory for the Donetsk rebels: Another Ukrainian plane was shot down in the city of Torez,” the anchorwoman for the Kremlin-loyal network LifeNews told viewers, referring to Russia-backed separatists fighting Kyiv’s forces in the region known as the Donbas:

The shoot-down led the network’s news segment on the evening of July 17, 2014, as the anchorwoman gave details of the separatists’ putative triumph.

“The rebels say they were able to shoot down another transport plane of the Ukrainian Air Force,” she said. “This occurred above the city of Torez in the self-declared Donetsk Republic. It all happened at around 5 p.m. Moscow time. A Ukrainian An-26 was flying, and suddenly it was struck by a missile, an explosion was heard, and the plane began to fall.”

The plane, of course, was not a Ukrainian military aircraft. It was MH17, from whose fuselage thick black smoke was streaming into the summer sky in the amateur footage broadcast by LifeNews.

The segment is part of a patchwork of evidence -- including news reports, social-media posts, and witness accounts -- showing that the Russia-backed separatists initially believed they had shot down an enemy aircraft -- and even boasted about doing so -- before the scale of the tragedy became clear. The victims – adults and children on a routine Boeing 777 flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur -- included citizens of 17 countries.

An international criminal investigation has since concluded that MH17 was shot down by a surface-to-air Buk missile from Russia’s 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade that was fired from territory held by the Russia-backed separatists. Last month, Dutch prosecutors announced murder charges against three Russian nationals and one Ukrainian for their alleged roles in the crime.

Both Russia and the separatist leadership deny involvement in the downing of MH17, despite the compelling evidence presented by Dutch prosecutors.

Here’s a look back at those brief few hours five years ago when the separatists -- in concert with Kremlin-friendly Russian media -- took credit for shooting down the plane that turned out to be MH17.

The most famous claim came in a pro-separatist forum on the Russian social-networking site VKontakte that frequently reposted dispatches from the war in eastern Ukraine from Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov), a former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who served as a separatist commander at the time MH17 was downed.

At 5:50 p.m. Moscow time on July 17, 2014 -- around 30 minutes after air-traffic controllers lost contact with MH17 -- a post was published in the VKontakte forum under the headline “message from the resistance.”

"In the area of Torez, we have just shot down an An-26 airplane" -- an Antonov military transport plane. It added, "We warned them -- don't fly 'in our sky,'" and said no civilians were injured after the “birdie fell.”

The post included two videos showing the black smoke from MH17 pouring out of the wreckage. The preview stills visible in archived versions of the now-deleted post show that one of the videos featured the same footage aired in the LifeNews report.

The post has frequently been attributed – probably erroneously -- to Strelkov himself. As Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler notes, it was most likely published by “fans” of the separatist commander.

The post was scrubbed once it became clear that the plane in question was a civilian airliner. It was replaced by another saying that the report was reposted from a forum in which “locals and rebels socialize” and that Strelkov “does not confirm” its accuracy.

The other video included in the original post is still available on YouTube. In it, bystanders off camera are heard discussing how a plane was “shot down.” One man says, “They brought it here for a reason,” though it’s unclear specifically what he is referring to.

Dutch prosecutors have concluded that MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile system brought in from Russia and taken back across the border shortly after the deadly incident.

In an interview published nearly two years after the downing of MH17, French photographer Jerome Sessini described in an interview how he ended up at the crash site to snap a series of images that earned him a World Press Photo award. 

On the day of the tragedy, Sessini recalled in the interview with the World Press Photo Foundation, he was contacted by a spokesperson for the Russia-backed separatists.