“There are claims, for one, that MH17 was shot down by a fighter jet and not a ground-to-air missile.”
MH17, a Boeing 777, exploded over eastern Ukraine with 298 people on board. “The official report concluded that the jet, bound for Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, was downed by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from a Ukraine area under the control of Russian-backed rebels.”
However, said the Express report, the BBC documentary also has “new evidence that a Ukrainian fighter jet may have shot down the aircraft”.
Another theory, said the newspaper, was that a CIA-backed “terrorist operation” planted two bombs on the airliner. “We heard a bang,” said witness Natasha Beronina who was interviewed by BBC. “At first, we saw black smoke and two planes, little ones like silver toys.”
Beronina, who claims to have been directly beneath the exploding aircraft, believes that she saw at least one fighter jet near the ill-fated aircraft. “It was summer, harvest time.”
“One plane flew straight on. The other turned round when the bang happened and flew back from where it had come.”
Billy Six, an investigative journalist from Germany, interviewed 100 witnesses. Seven of them claim to have seen a fighter jet near MH17. “One of them even told me how he saw it launch a missile, ” said Six. “It was like a small line in the sky going into the clouds. Then, he heard the big boom.”
Six has reasons to believe that two jets shot MH17 down, one firing a canon into the cockpit from the back of MH17 to destroy the crew. “Another fired an air-to-air missile.”
In the war of words between Ukraine and Moscow, pointed out Six, Russian media reported that a Captain Vladislav Voloshin was responsible. “In an interview, he denied the allegations made by a mechanic at the southern Ukraine airbase.”
“We did not carry out flights on July 17. The mechanic says that three aircraft went out on a mission and that I was the only one to return. This actually happened on the 23rd,” BBC quoted Voloshin as saying. “The said aircraft were allegedly carrying air-to-air missiles. There were no air-to-air missiles.”
“I was carrying air-to-surface weapons for ground targets.”
Private investigator Sergey Sokolov, who had 100 agents scouring the site for evidence, makes some shocking allegations as well. “No shrapnel from a Buk missile was found,” he told BBC. “I was ‘sold’ a phone intercept between two CIA agents.”
“The conversation suggests that they may have masterminded the planting of two bombs on MH17.”
The CIA, alleged Sokolov, acted in cahoots with the Ukrainian secret service. “The driving force of the operation were CIA agents.”
“The Dutch security service also had a part. The bombs were put on the plane in Holland. It couldn’t have been done anywhere else.”
This terrorist act was a pretext for firstly intensifying sanctions on Russia, continued Sokolov, secondly to show the world that Russia was a barbarian country and thirdly to strengthen the presence of Nato in Europe, particularly Ukraine.