Intercepted phone calls purportedly between Russian military
intelligence officers and members of a pro-Russian separatist group that
appear to capture the moment the rebels realized the plane they shot
down was a civilian passenger plane could be the smoking gun that helps
prove Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed Ukraine by the insurgents.
The tapes were released by SBU, Ukraine's security agency, and transcript was published in the Kiev Post.
It appears to capture the chaotic moments after the plane was shot down
— and the realization that it was a passenger plane rather than a
Ukrainian transport plane, which had been targeted in recent days by the
Russia-backed separatists.
"We have just shot down a plane," says a man the SBU identified as
Igor Bezler, a Russian military intelligence officer and leading
commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
That call came just 20 minutes after the crash and was placed to a
person identified by Ukraine’s SBU as a colonel in the main intelligence
department of the general headquarters of the armed forces of the
Russian Federation Vasili Geranin, according to Ukraine security
officials.
But in a second tape released by the agency, two men identified as
"The Greek" and "Major" discuss the debris field and the fact the the
plane was a civilian aircraft.
"We have just shot down a plane."- Igor Bezler, Russian military intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic
“It’s 100 percent a passenger [civilian] aircraft,” Major is recorded
as saying, as he admitted to seeing no weapons on site. “Absolutely
nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper.”
The Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was
shot down by what U.S. intelligence sources confirm was a surface-to-air
missile near the village of Chornukhine, Luhansk Oblast, some 30 miles
inside the the border with Russia.
The second conversation, if verified as authentic, could dispel
Russian separatist claims that it was the Ukrainian military that shot
the plane down. According to the transpcript:
Major: "These are Chernukhin folks who shot down the plane. From
the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in
Chernukhino."
Grek: "Yes, Major."
Major: "The plane fell apart in the air. In the area of
Petropavlovskaya mine. The first '200' [code word for dead person]. We
have found the first '200.' A Civilian."
Greek: "Well, what do you have there?"
Major: "In short, it was 100 percent a passenger [civilian] aircraft."
Greek: "Are many people there?"
Major: "Holy [expletive]! The debris fell right into the yards [of homes]."
In a third intercepted conversation released by the SBU — which the
agency says took place about 40 minutes after insurgents seemed to
realize they had shot down a civilian plane — Cossack commander Nikolay
Kozitsin tells an unidentified separatist that the fact the Malaysia
Airlines plane was flying over the combat zone likely meant it was
carrying spies.
"That means they were carrying spies," Kozitsin allegedly says. "They shouldn’t be [expletive] flying. There is a war going on."
On Friday, emergency workers combed the sunflower fields and villages
of eastern Ukraine, searching the wreckage of the jetliner. The attack
on Thursday afternoon killed 298 people from nearly a dozen nations,
including vacationers, students and a large contingent of scientists
heading to an AIDS conference.
U.S.
intelligence authorities said a surface-to-air missile
brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur, but could not say who fired it. The Ukraine government in
Kiev, the separatist pro-Russia rebels they are fighting in the east and
the Russia government that Ukraine accuses of supporting the rebels all
deny shooting the passenger plane down. Moscow also denies backing the
rebels.
By midday, at least 181 bodies had been located, emergency workers said.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the downing, saying it was
responsible for the unrest in its Russian-speaking eastern regions — but
did not accuse Ukraine of shooting the plane down and did not address
the key question of whether Russia gave the rebels such a powerful
missile.
Ukrainian
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk described the downing as an
"international crime" whose perpetrators would have to be punished in an
international tribunal.