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Russian Defense Ministry says media are lying about the MH17 crash

Source: Interfax

Major General Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman, has dismissed recent media publications about Russian Buk missile fragments found at the crash sight of the Malaysian Boeing as “complete lies.”

Konashenkov’s statement refers to a publication on the website Censor.net which features photographs of a double-T-shaped metal fragment found at the crash site of flight MH17. According to the publication, such fragments come from warheads of the surface-to-air missile Buk-M1-2, which is operated only by Russia.

According to Knashenko, the distinctly shaped parts can be found only in a Buk-M1 missile, which Ukraine operates, while the Buk-M1-2 parts are built differently.

“These are complete lies. The double-T-shaped warheads shown in the photo belong to only one rocket – the Buk-M1 rocket, which are precisely the ones Ukraine has in its inventory. The Buk-M1-2 warheads are actually shaped like small parallelepipeds, and there’s no way any double-T-shaped fragments are part of that. So this website’s ‘exclusive’ report actually pulled the rug out from under the feet of its own sponsors.”

Interfax

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed on July 17, 2014 in Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board were killed. Final results of the investigation have not yet been disclosed.

The Censor.net article which the Russian Defense Ministry criticized was published on March 18. The article claims that investigators had managed to compare metal pieces found at the MH17 crash site with Buk-M1-2 warheads. The report states that the shape of the recovered fragments resembles parts of the Ukrainian Buk-M1 warheads, but are different in size. The fragments allegedly match up perfectly with Buk-M1-2 warheads, which only Russia owns. 

On March 16, the Dutch television channel RTL News published an article on its website describing the fragments found at the MH17 Flight crash site. The article quoted a statement made by Nicolas de Larrinaga, defense expert of IHS Jane’s, about the fact that the warhead fragments found at the crash site match up with Buk-M1-2 warheads.

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