DPR Representative: Here it is.
Olga Ivshina, BBC: The black boxes from the crashed Boeing are finally being transferred into the hands of the experts. However, how much can they tell us?
The recorders logged the coordinates and the heading of the aircraft at the time of the incident and may have recorded the sound of the explosion. However, they will not tell us what exactly caused the explosion.
The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain that they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly prior to the catastrophe. According to them, it actually was the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.
Eyewitness #1: There were two explosions in the air. And this is how it broke apart. And [the fragments] blew apart like this, to the sides. And when …
Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.
Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.
Eyewitness #3: There were sounds of an explosion. But they were in the sky. They came from the sky. Then this plane made a sharp turn-around like this. It changed its trajectory and headed in that direction [indicating the direction with her hands].
Olga Ivshina, BBC: The Ukrainian government rejects this version of events. They believe that the Boeing was shot down using a missile from a “BUK” complex that came in from the direction of Russia.
Vitaliy Naida, Department of Counterintelligence of SBU [Ukrainian Security Service]: This was a BUK M1 system from which the aircraft was shot down. It came to Ukraine early in the morning on the 17th of July. It was delivered by a tow truck to the city of Donetsk. After that, it was redeployed from Donetsk, as part of a column of military equipment, to the area of the city of Torez, to the area of Snezhnoye, to the area of Pervomaisk.
Olga Ivshina, BBC: The Ukrainian Security Service has published photographs and a video, which, in its opinion, prove that the Boeing was shot down with a “BUK” missile. We attempted to verify these photographs and information at the location.
One of the photographs showed a landscape not far from the city of Torez, on which smoke could be seen coming from the presumed location of the missile’s launch. We attempted to find this location, and it appears that we were successful.
We are now on the outskirts of the city of Torez. Behind me, approximately five kilometres away, is the city of Snezhnoye. And the landscape here matches the landscape that we can see on the photograph published by the Ukrainian Security Service.
To find the place from which the smoke was allegedly coming from, we adopted as markers these three poplars and the group of trees. Presumably, this is the place that can be seen on the photograph published by the SBU. And here are our markers: the three solitary poplars and the small group of trees in the distance.
The smoke that can be seen on the photograph came from somewhere over there [pointing behind her], behind my back. The SBU believes that this is a trace coming from the launch of a “BUK” missile.
However, it must be noted that there are here, approximately in the same place, the Saur-Mogila memorial, near which the fighting continues almost unabated, and a coalmine. It turns out that the smoke with the same degree of probability could have been coming from any of these locations.
Having circled around the nearby fields, we were unable to find any traces of a missile launch. Nor did the local inhabitants that we encountered see any “BUK” either.
At the ruins of an apartment building in the city of Snezhnoye, the topic of the jet fighters that may have been escorting civilian aircraft comes up again. A bomb dropped from above took away the lives of eleven civilians here.
Sergey Godovanets, Commander of the Militia of the city of Snezhnoye: They use these civilian aircraft to hide behind them. It is only now that they stopped flying over us – but, usually, civilian aircraft would always fly above us. And they hide [behind them]. [The experience in] Slavyansk had demonstrated that they would fly out from behind a civilian aircraft, bomb away, and then hide, once again, behind the civilian aircraft and fly away.
Olga Ivshina, BBC: The commander of the local militia emphasizes that they have no weaponry capable of shooting down a jet fighter [flying] at a significant height. However, he says that if such weaponry were to appear, they would have tried to.
Sergey Godovanets: If we know that it is not a civilian aircraft, but a military one, then – yes.
Olga Ivshina, BBC: So, could the Boeing have been shot down by the militias that had mistaken it for a military aircraft? There is as yet no unequivocal confirmation of either this or any other version [of what took place]. The international experts are just beginning their work with the information obtained from the crashed airliner. It now appears that it is difficult to overstate the importance of this investigation. Olga Ivshina, BBC.
