UKRAINIAN ROULETTE

You've seen the deadly game called Russian Roulette in the film The Deer Hunter.

That game has now been advanced to international level, and is now called Ukrainian Roulette. This deadly game involves not a revolver loaded with a single bullet but a BUK system with a single missile.

The rebel commander Aleksandr Khodakovsky was very recently interviewed by Reuters. The interview went viral because it is alleged that Khodakovsky admitted that the rebels had a BUK at the time that MH17 was shot down.

Even Brown Moses, the citizen journalist who is still desperately, desperately trying to pin Ghouta on Assad as he capitalises on his new found fame with a masterclass sponsored by The Guardian, has waded in on this and tweeted the excerpt of the Reuters interview.

Audio of Reuters interview with Donetsk Rebel Commander Aleksandr Khodakovsky admitting they had a Buk http://t.co/JNTtdluTif #MH17

— Brown Moses (@Brown_Moses) July 24, 2014

But even in this excerpt what does Khodakovsky say? He says that he 'heard' about a BUK and only at the time MH17 was shot down, that the BUK may have been moved away, but also that Ukraine knew about this BUK and should have diverted passenger jets away from the area.

What we have to understand is that Khodakovsky will not have been told and therefore does not know everything that the rebels are doing.

But in another interview from the day before the Reuters interview, Khodakovsky states:

“We have completely reliable information from the Ukrainian media that supposedly the Ukrainians knew in advance that the militia had a Buk. We know that the Ukrainians placed in mass media tape recordings of telephone calls of various leaders of the militia formations or other fighters in the militia movement. They discuss the problem of the delivery of the Buk, the presence of a Buk. All of those conversations are dated a day earlier than the tragedy or earlier. So we can say that if the Ukrainians are claim they have reliable evidence, then they had in advance information that the militia’s Buk was a) present with them and b) was located in a combat zone, specifically, the area of Snezhnoye where in their opinion where the shot was made that destroyed such a number of lives.”

...Moreover, unexpectedly, on that day, in the area of Snezhnoye, in the area of Saur-Mogila, Ukraine suddenly activated its air action and planes, which had been absent for several days before that over that zone suddenly actively began to bomb, the Saur-Mogila and the position of the militia.”

[source : Russian-Backed Separatist Leader Khodakovsky Changes His Story to Reuters — or Does He?, The Interpreter, http://www.interpretermag.com/russian-backed-separatist-khodakovsky-changes-his-story-to-reuters-or-does-he/, 24th July 2014]

And then in an interview last night with LifeNews, Khodakovsky denies the rebels had a BUK.

The above article also questions the tense that Khodakovsky used in the Reuters article, implying a possible deliberate mistranslation by Reuters and RFERL.

What Khodakovsky says is this:
1. he heard that a BUK was going to be in the possession of the rebels, and he heard of this at the time MH17 was shot down, not before;
2. that Ukraine knew of this BUK;
3. so Ukraine should have diverted civilian aircraft away from the area;
4. he cannot be sure if the rebels had a BUK at the time that MH17 was shot down because it may have been turned away before the rebels could be trained to use it in order to conceal its presence.

Now, let's add this to the information we have:
1. very suspiciously soon after MH17 came down, Ukraine released a tape said to be of rebels talking about a BUK, but that tape was put together BEFORE MH17 was shot down;
2. Ukraine also pointed out several videos alleging a Russian BUK scurrying back to Russia after shooting MH17 down, but it has since been shown that that BUK was Ukrainian and was filmed in an area controlled by Ukraine;
3. Khodakovsky says that on the day that MH17 was shot down, "Ukraine suddenly activated its air action and planes, which had been absent for several days before that over that zone suddenly actively began to bomb". In other words, Ukraine was bombing the rebels and may have been using civilian aircraft as either cover or to entice the rebels to shoot the civilian aircraft down;
4. Ukraine has still not released the ATC transcripts/recordings from MH17.

So if we add this to the Russian evidence that an unidentified military jet (or bomber?) was close to MH17 when it was shot down, and that MH17 had been told to fly over the area and at a lower than normal altitude, then we can conclude one of two things:
a) assuming the rebels did have a BUK, AND they could use it, then at the very least Ukraine was using MH17 as cover to bomb the rebels, or was enticing the rebels to shoot at their bomber/jet but somehow the BUK evaded the jet/bomber and hit MH17;
Or
b) the rebels had the BUK but did not have the time and/or training to use it, or they did not have the BUK at all, but Ukraine suspecting that the rebels did have a BUK shot MH17 down to blame on the rebels and Putin.

I suspect b).