8 years ago today a Russian operated surface-to-air Buk from the 53rd Air Defense Brigade, based outside of Kursk, shot down the civilian airliner #MH17 and murdered 298 innocent civilians, including 88 children, from a field south of Snizhne in Donetsk Oblast. /1
Shortly afterwards, Igor Girkin (Strelkov) announced that a Ukrainian An-26 was shot down near the town of Torez (since 2016 called Chystiakove nearby Snizhne) and shared pictures of smoke in the distance. /2
After it became clear that the Buk downed a civilian airliner, Girkin quickly removed his gloating post. /3
Since the first minutes after the tragedy, the Russians and their proxies have been floating the space with wild and contradictory conspiracy theories about the MH17 incident but failed to convince those who cared to look at the facts. /4
.@bellingcat meticulously investigated open sources (including pictures and videos of the system and satellite imagery) and tracked photos of the Buk launcher from Russia to occupied #Ukraine and back. /5 bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
In 2020, Bellingcat and @the_ins_ru even identified Colonel General Andrey Ivanovich Burlaka of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) as the one who supervised the movement of weapons from Russia to Ukraine. /6 theins.ru/politika/216447
In 2019, the outlet produced a a very good podcast about their investigation that I - until today - recommend everyone to listen to. /7 bellingcat.com/resources/podc…
The open source investigations were later confirmed by the criminal investigations of the Joint Investigations Team (JIT).
In 2019, The Dutch Prosecution Service announced that it charges four suspects for downing MH17, including Igor Girkin. /8 prosecutionservice.nl/topics/mh17-pl…
While the judicial process grinds on, despite Russia’s unwillingness to cooperate, the EU’s High Representative wrote yesterday that the EU “expects Russia to accept its responsibility and to fully cooperate with efforts to establish accountability.” /9 consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press….
The downing of MH17 is a painful reminder that Russia’s war against #Ukraine started eight years ago and while the intensity flared up in 2014-15, it never became a truly frozen conflict. Until February 2022, about 14.000 people were killed in this senseless war. /10
On irritating comment on Girkin came from @MarkGaleotti in his podcast (Nr. 72), where he said that Girkin rather by inaction was responsible for the downing of MH17… /11 podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/in-…
and at ~11:50 of the podcast @MarkGaleotti says: “…it is worth stressing, the rebels when they used their Russian supplied surface-to-air missile didn’t know they were shooting down a civilian airliner.”
No Marc, the airliner was not downed by “rebels”… /12
but by professional Russian soldiers by the 53rd Air Defense Brigade from Kursk.
I would appreciate if you could correct that in future podcasts. I also take issue with your description of the origins of the Donbas war as a “toxic mix of foreign intervention and civil war” /13
but that is a separate issue, which is worth discussing but not on the anniversary of MH17. On this topic, I suggest Jakob Hauter’s comprehensive research, which comes to rather clear conclusions. /end lehmanns.de/shop/sozialwis…
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The arrest of a Oleh Kulinich, who was in charge of the SBU’s department for the occupied Crimea, is as spectacular as it is embarrassing for Zelenskyy’s trusted ally and head of the country’s intelligence service Ivan Bakanov. Small 🧵 /1
As @MrKovalenko outlines, the arrest of the SBU’s Oleh Kulinich is spectacular but also embarrassing. Kulinich studied spy craft at the KGB academy in Moscow and was appointed to his recent position in October 2020. /2
According to the State Bureau of Investigations, the agency that arrested him, Kulinich (whose name is not mentioned in the press release) handed over intelligence to the Russians, making him the highest ranking mole to be arrested in the recent past. /3 dbr.gov.ua/news/dbr-ta-sb…
Yes, the poll and the way the question is phrased raises questions but how come 47% of Germans find it acceptable to tell the victims of this unprovoked war of aggression to give up territories? /2
As @TimothyDSnyder has argued repeatedly, Germans are unfortunately utterly unaware of the part of the WWII, which involved the Nazis conquering and attempting to colonize Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe killing and destroying large parts of it. /3
Die 🇺🇦 ist dabei in Windeseile eine der innovativsten Verwaltungen Europas zu bauen.
Die Diia App und das dazugehörige Portal lässt mich regelmäßig vor Neid erblassen. 100% der staatlichen Dienstleistungen sollen digitalisiert werden. HIER kann 🇩🇪 VIEL von der 🇺🇦 lernen. /1
Was heißt das praktisch? Die Ukraine baut eine one-stop-shop App für Interaktion zwischen Staat und Bürger, in der letztere künftig ALLE Anträge und Leistungen etc. papierlos beantragen und erhalten können. Vieles läuft bereits. /2
Die Ukraine war das erste Land Europas, das einen digitalen Pass (die digitale Version des Reisepasses) als staatliches Dokument verbindlich akzeptiert- von Polizei, Flughafen bis Hotel. Hier der Minister über die "Achievements". /3 atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainea…
Intellektuelle fordern einen Waffenstillstand im Ukrainekrieg und leugnen den Unterschied zwischen dem Aggressor und denen, die Widerstand leisten. Das spielt dem Machthaber im Kreml in die Hände, schreibt Georg Witte in seiner exzellenten Replik. /1 faz.net/aktuell/feuill…
An einer Stelle schreibt Witte so passend: "Als Deutscher schäme ich mich dafür, dass ein Klub einflussreicher Intellektueller dem Widerstand einer zur Vernichtung ausgeschriebenen Nation die diskursive Existenz verweigert." Dem kann ich nur voll zustimmen. /2
Die Abwesenheit von dieser diskursiven Existenz der Ukraine, jeglicher Empathie für den Existenzkampf der Ukrainer und Wissen über die russischen Kriegsziele macht den Brief der und die Forderung der "Intellektuellen" nach einem Waffenstillstand für mich so schwer erträglich. /3
After the NYT editorial board and yesterday’s guest essay calling on the Ukrainians to surrender to “save lives and avoid escalation”, I was surprised to read a well articulated opinion piece by President Biden outlining the US’ goals and assistance. /1 nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opi…
As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, ultimately this war “will only definitively end through diplomacy.” Every negotiation reflects the facts on the ground, President Biden writes and adds… /2
“We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” /3
A good overview thread over the history of (south) eastern Ukraine, which includes the Cossacks and many other settlers, the Russian and Soviet industrialization and colonization of the Donbas.
Obviously, @YMonastyrskyi’s thread is an appetizer. To those who want to read more, I highly recommend the forthcoming translation of Sasha Mykhed «I’ll Mix Your Blood with Coal: Understanding the Ukrainian East». It’s currently only available in 🇺🇦/🇩🇪. /2 chytomo.com/selection-ukra…
When studying Ukrainian history, I also found Serhiy Plokhy’s “The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires” useful as an overview. /3 cambridge.org/de/academic/su…