State-Owned Russian Missile-Maker Blames Ukraine for MH17

Almaz-Antey, the Russian arms manufacturer responsible for the construction of the BUK launcher system blamed for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, released a new report on October 13 which cast suspicion on Ukrainian forces for downing the aircraft. The Almaz-Antey report was released shortly before a Dutch Safety Board report which concluded that MH17 was hit by a BUK missile, but which did not say from where the missile was fired.

“Today we can say for sure that if the Boeing was downed with a BUK missile, then it was with a 9M38 from the populated area of Zaroschenskoye,” said Mikhail Malyshevsky, adviser to the head engineer of Almaz-Antey, according to Sputnik International. Russian-backed separatists have been widely blamed for the incident, with the amateur investigation site Bellingcat being widely cited for its investigation into the incident and its conclusion that Russian-backed separatists were to blame.

Almaz-Antey’s conclusions were based on a experiment, seen in the video here, in which they fired a BUK missile at a decommissioned aircraft. Credit: YouTube/Almaz-Antey