Russian state television produced a "satellite image" that allegedly showed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 being shot down by a fighter jet Friday, in what appeared to be a crude fake deliberately released on the eve of the G20 economic summit. Channel One presented the image, said to have been taken moments before the passenger jet crashed in eastern Ukraine, as a smoking gun that confirmed how MH17 had been downed, killing all 298 people on board on July 17.
"It's well know that at the (G20) summit in Brisbane, the Australian prime minister, (Tony) Abbott, has threatened to confront our president about the Malaysian Boeing," said the presenter, Mikhail Leontyev, one of Vladimir Putin's chief propaganda mouthpieces. "Let's try to make his task a little easier."
A Russian engineer investigating the crash told the program he had received the "sensational picture" on Nov. 12. The channel showed an email in English from a "George Bilt," supposedly a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and aviation expert, who claimed the Boeing was shot down by cannon fire and missiles from a plane.
Moscow has suggested in the past that a Ukrainian Su25 fighter jet was tracking the passenger liner. Russian and international bloggers quickly pointed to what they said were a mass of discrepancies with the supposed satellite image, including the fact the markings on the side of the Boeing were in the wrong place for a Malaysia Airlines jet, the clouds in the picture were identical to those in a Google Earth image from 2012, and the image was not consistent with the flight path of the jet. An investigation by the Dutch Safety Board found the jet was pierced from the outside by a large numbers of "high-energy objects."
That finding was consistent with the main theory about the crash: that the plane was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher located on territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
Such missiles explode next to a target, destroying it in a hail of shrapnel rather than blowing it up. The release of the "satellite image" came as Ukraine's prime minister said that creating an army strong enough to withstand Russian belligerence is the country's top priority.
"Building an army which is capable of stopping aggression from Russia, is the No. 1 task," Arseniy Yatsenyuk said during a televised briefing in Kyiv. Last weekend, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported columns of military vehicles travelling through rebel-held territory. Moscow responded by accusing the OSCE of only reporting on rebel troop movements while ignoring a buildup of Ukrainian forces in the region. "We get the impression that (the OSCE'S) efforts are directed at helping and supporting only one side in the conflict, the official authorities in Kyiv," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has said that is redeploying troops in the area and is bracing itself for a Russianbacked rebel offensive that could target the key city of Mariupol on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
