The evidence

THE circumstantial evidence for what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 and to the 298 people on board is already powerful. But there are still many unresolved questions, the answer to which will have a major bearing on what happens next. There is little or no doubt that the aircraft, which was flying above eastern Ukraine at 33,000 feet, was shot down by a Russian-designed surface-to-air missile, almost certainly a Buk missile (known as the SA-17 in the West) or just possibly a more powerful S-300 (designated SA-10 by NATO). Both systems are in use by Russian and Ukrainian forces. It appears that the missile was launched from Chernukhino, near Snezhnoye, about 80km from Donetsk, in territory controlled by Russian separatists and about 20km from the main crash site. That is easily within the range of even the earliest Buk systems which were developed in the 1970s by the Soviet Union.

Early on July 17th, several hours before MH17 was destroyed, journalists from the Associated Press reported seeing a launcher near Snezhnoye that they said looked like a Buk system. Igor Sutyagin, a Russian expert at RUSI, a London-based think-tank, says...Continue reading