Greetings from Novorossiya: Eyewitness to the War in Ukraine

9. THE STORY OF A MISSILE

ON JULY 17, about 4:20 in the afternoon Ukrainian time, air traffic control lost contact with Malaysian Airlines flight number MH17. Soon afterwards video footage emerged on the Internet. It was shot in the town of Torez, thirty kilometers from the Ukrainian-Russian border. You can see a white trail in the sky and then a huge cloud of black smoke appearing on the horizon. There were 298 people aboard the Boeing 777, including eighty children. Nobody survived.

More or less at the same time the controllers lost contact with the airplane, separatists put out information on their websites and on Russian social media about their great success. They claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian An-26, a military transport aircraft. When it turned out that it was a civilian plane, the posts were immediately deleted.

The “prime minister” of the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Borodai, a Russian, instantly accused the Ukrainians of the attack. Using his Twitter account he stated that the “volunteers” didn’t have the proper equipment to shoot down a plane at ten thousand meters. The residents of Torez have a different view. They have seen a BUK missile system there with the capacity to down a plane. They recorded everything with videos and photos.

When the media announce the airplane was shot down, two Western journalists, their fixer, and I are in Artemivsk. In a split second we make the decision that next day we will go to Hrabove, which is the site of the plane debris. Traveling in the evening is not a good idea because you can easily be fired at. At night the conflict areas are completely dead.

Initially, we were flabbergasted by this horrific information.

“Let’s wait for confirmation,” said one of the journalists. We couldn’t believe that anyone would have had the idea of downing a civilian plane. But the information was quickly validated, although no one knew why it happened. The phones were ringing nonstop. In the restaurant where we get together, we were running around like crazy. We were sharing information, making phone calls, and preparing our reports.

We gathered after eight in the morning, so we could have some hotel breakfast. We anticipated a long day. We decided to go through Debaltseve. It is connected to Artemivsk by a highway. From there it is only a dozen kilometers to Hrabove, where the plane debris has been found. However, this route turned out to be impossible because separatists had blown up the bridge. We diverted from the main road and drove through some fields. We came across a checkpoint manned by militants. They looked as if they had never seen a journalist. They decided to search us.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“From Russia,” answers one of them. But his manner is so slow and strange that I am not sure whether he really means he is from over there, or if he wishes Russia were over here. After a few questions the conversation falls apart. In the end, they let us go.

In Debaltseve we come across yet another checkpoint. We see a few people in uniform and with guns. They stop our car.

“Journalists? Documents!” says a man in a very stern voice. It doesn’t herald a pleasant conversation.

We have accreditations issued by the Donetsk People’s Republic. We show them immediately when he wants our passports.

“What is that?” he asks.

“The accreditation,” I respond.

“I’ve never heard of it.” He looks at the laminated piece of paper. It says that it was issued by the Donetsk People’s Republic. The document has all the necessary stamps and signatures.

“We can call the Press Secretary,” says the fixer when the separatist starts to sniff at it.

“I don’t know her.”

“We can call the Minister of Information.”

“I don’t know him, either.”

There is a short pause. We don’t know how to convince him that we have all the documents we need to continue our trip. Finally, he finds the answer.

“You have to stay here until I get permission from my commander. You are detained.”

He is not willing to answer any questions. He tells us to get in the car and to remain visible. We are not supposed to use our phones or talk. Simply, we have to sit there and wait.

Every now and then they look at us. I am sitting in the back, blocked out by the driver’s seat. Slowly, I pull out a phone from my pocket and send a text message to a friend in Kiev.

“If you don’t hear from me for a long time, that means that I have been arrested.” We spoke on the phone earlier, so he knows where we are, more or less.

After twenty minutes we are permitted to drive further.

“You can go. The ataman gave his consent,” says a separatist. “But pull over near the gas station and pick up some luggage,” he insists.

“What luggage?” one of the journalists asks, petrified.

“From the plane,” replies the militant.

Supposedly, the luggage was brought over by the local residents. The plane exploded in the air, so its fragments and everything else onboard were scattered across a wide area, as far as a dozen kilometers from where it happened.

“But what do we need these things for?”

“You can take them. We don’t want them.”

“What are we supposed to do with them? Shall we hand them over to someone?”

“We don’t know.”

“There might be a passport in one of the suitcases,” interrupts another militant, encouragingly.

We are not interested in the luggage contents, and we are not going to look inside. We are given a suitcase, a backpack, and a box. The fixer puts them into the trunk right away because he wants to drive off as soon as possible. Neither he nor we are going to discuss this. We have no idea what to do with them, either. In the end, we decide to return the luggage when we reach our destination. After all, there must be someone who will take care of them.

Further on, driving is very simple. We pass a few checkpoints, but the militants already know that they have to let journalists proceed. They glance at the Donetsk People’s Republic accreditation and off we go. They must have received an order from above to let journalists access the site.

We bring our unusual present to the crash site. We want to return it to someone, maybe to the rescue workers or to other people in charge. No one is especially interested in what we have brought. I immediately understand why. A few pieces of luggage are the least of the problems. Piles of suitcases are strewn all over, for a dozen kilometers. So are plane fragments and partly charred bodies, or what was left of them, often without limbs. You have to be careful where you place your foot because you can step on a corpse.

A cameraman from one of the TV stations took a step backward. He felt something soft. He was turned toward me. Suddenly a terrible grimace appeared on his face. Slowly, he turned his head to look at his foot, fearing the worst. It turned out to be only mud. He glanced at me again, this time with great relief.

On one of the fields where much of the luggage could be found nothing has been done with the bodies. They are still there, uncovered. Rescue workers, firefighters, and medics walk around aimlessly. Then they start fixing a damaged power line. Only after a few hours do they gather a group of coal miners who most likely will look for bodies. Others place white flags to label corpses and remains. No one knows what is going on. The rescue workers don’t want to answer any questions. They tell us to call a press spokesperson, but he doesn’t want to talk to us, either.

Other than flags and some tape nothing secures the area. In principle, anyone can get to the crash site. The remains of plane, passengers, and belongings are not protected in any way. Dozens of residents from local towns and villages stand on the road, next to the plane wreck. Many of them cry or have tears in their eyes.

The remains of the fuselage can be found a few hundred meters further on. In the Russian media footage that was shown yesterday you could see some bodies. Today they are gone. Only the wreck has remained. What happened to them? According to the most popular theory they have been taken by militants. The cadavers had shrapnel in them so it would be possible to conjecture that the fuselage was hit by a missile.

Pavel Gubarev, one of the separatist representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, has come to the site. He is with his bodyguards, but probably his only purpose here is to appear in the media.

To most of the journalists’ questions he responds: “I can’t comment on this.”

He maintains, however, that the plane was not shot down by separatists but by Ukrainians from the Dnipropetrovsk region. This is almost 190 kilometers from the crash site. Gubarev wants to find out more and pass the information to the reporters. So he calls the “prime minister” of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian PR man, Alexander Borodai. Borodai doesn’t pick up.

“I’ll try again,” says Gubarev, a little unnerved.

Nothing happens. Borodai’s cell is silent. Gubarev has not tried again. This just confirms how insignificant he is in the Donetsk People’s Republic, and that for a long time the reins have been held by someone else.

In the background you can hear explosions. It is artillery. According to separatist sources, insurgents in the Luhansk region have begun a counterattack, and they are trying to crush the Ukrainian forces. “They have been shooting since this morning. Fighting must be very heavy,” says Oxana who lives near the crash site.

The bodies that were scattered in the fields were picked up after three days. The corpses were to be examined by experts from Donetsk. Who are those experts? Do they know what they are doing? No one knows.

According to the Ukrainians, the separatists are taking the bodies to Russia. At least some of them, those that might prove that the airplane was shot down. The bodies found near the fuselage disappeared on the first night. Initially, nobody knew what happened to the black boxes, either. The separatist “authorities” were not sure whether they had them. One day they said “yes,” next day they said “no.” Only on the fourth day after the crash were the black boxes handed over to a delegation from Malaysian Airlines.

During the day the crash site is guarded by a group of separatists. Their commander is called “Grim.” A photo of him with a toy monkey went around the world. He has a badge in the colors of the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic that says on it “General Prosecutor’s Office.” Yet he doesn’t want to give his full name. He fired in the air, twice. First, when the OSCE mission tried to reach the crash site. Next day, in the same fashion, he decided to convince the journalists to move away. It was very effective.

When the OSCE mission tried to get to the site for the second time, they were accompanied by several other vehicles. In them there were about thirty armed men with badges of the delegalized police unit Berkut, and several dozen separatists from Slovyansk. They were from the closest entourage of Igor Girkin, the “military commander” of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Among them I noticed a former spokesperson of the “greens.” And a “local reporter,” as he called himself in April. Now he was in uniform and he had a rifle in his hand. As I was told by one of the Russian journalists, this person introduced himself as Girkin’s former spokesperson. It was Girkin who exercised full control over the separatist-held areas in the Donetsk region. It looked as though he had the final say about anything connected to the crash.

Almost immediately the separatists started to blame the Ukrainians for downing the Boeing. They instantly presented varied theories about why it was the Ukrainians’ fault. First, it was Gubarev’s hypothesis that the jetliner was shot down while still in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Others speculated that it was downed by a Ukrainian SU-27 fighter. Later, they surmised that Ukrainians wanted to hit a plane with Putin aboard but they mixed up the airplanes.

Of course, all the “Donetsk Republic” leaders maintain that they are not equipped with BUK missiles. They don’t accept the fact that previously they wrote and said something different.

Girkin’s version of events was the most startling. In an interview published on the separatist website Russian Spring he claimed that “most of the corpses weren’t fresh” and that the bodies were “drained of blood.” Therefore, he suggested, it was a medical plane.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, moreover, casually stated that if the jetliner crashed on Ukrainian territory it is the Ukrainians’ fault, regardless of who was shooting at the plane.

The interview Alexander Khodakovsky, the commander of the Ukrainian-Russian battalion Vostok, gave to Reuters was just a formality. He confirmed that the separatists were equipped with the BUK missile system. The quantity of evidence was large enough to state this conclusively. Khodakovsky admits that the system was not seized from the Ukrainian army, but that it arrived from the Luhansk region under the separatists’ banners. It is probable that it came from Russia. According to him, after the plane went down, the BUK disappeared from that location in order not to leave any evidence. Despite this, Khodakovsky blames Ukraine for this tragedy because it provoked this whole situation. Its planes were presumed to be flying over these areas. After the interview was published, the Vostok commander tried to explain that he hadn’t said anything of the kind. By that very fact he was caught red-handed. Reuters released the recorded interview in which his very words could be heard.

As I mentioned before, the bodies were collected only on the third day after the airplane was downed. You could smell their odor. It is not clear why this took so long. On the one hand, it might have been because of the investigation, but on the other, how can you explain that the bodies near the cockpit fragments were gone the next day? In addition, someone was going through the passengers’ luggage. On the third day a broken computer and two bottles of Duty Free alcohol were placed on the pile of suitcases. Supposedly, this was to confirm that nothing had been robbed. However, if you consider that only a small portion of the crash site seemed to be protected, this was very unlikely.

The bodies were packed into bags and laid alongside the road. Then they were placed in refrigerator trucks and taken away. Where to? There was contradictory information. Some claimed that the bodies were in the Donetsk morgue and were later sent elsewhere. The journalists who arrived in Donetsk to check this out were arrested.

In the end it turned out that a train with almost two hundred bodies was at Torez station—a locomotive, four refrigerator cars, and a service wagon. At first, no one was sure it was the right train. Neither the railroad engineer nor other people who entered the train were willing to talk. The train station employees were more inclined to make statements, but they didn’t know much.

“When I showed up at work at seven, the train was already loaded and running,” says Veronika, who works at the station. The train’s destination was not known until the last minute. “We are still waiting for instructions,” she added helplessly.

When I started walking around the train I noticed that one door was not closed completely and a little crack was left open. It was covered with flies and you could smell the awful odor of decomposing bodies. Fresh stains, like ones I had seen at the station, were visible under a few wagon doors.

People living nearby saw at least three trucks with bodies that arrived at midnight. Loading began right away. There is a lot of sand on the parking lot where the trucks had been standing. It smells bad, too.

In the end the train went to Kharkiv, and then the bodies were transported further.

For many Ukrainians it was a breakthrough moment in the conflict.

“I hope that those in the West will finally wake up and take appropriate action,” says Vladimir from Dnipropetrovsk, who serves in the Ukrainian army. He was not isolated in his hope. But it turned out to be in vain. The Ukrainian war came back on track. It has become a problem that will be settled between Ukraine and Russia.