Kermit Heartsong - Ukraine - ZBIG's Grand Chess Board & How The West Was Checkmated

The Western strategic goal to evict Russia from its Crimean military and naval bases was thus in tatters.

Malaysian Airline Flight MH17

“There’s a Mountain of Evidence Linking Russia to the Downing Of The Malaysia Airliner.”

— Pau Szoldra, Business Insider

On July 17, 2014, Malaysian Flight MH17 on route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over eastern Ukraine, which resulted in the deaths of 298 passengers.

Less than twenty-four hours later, lacking an official investigation, the presentation of any forensic evidence, the examination of Flight MH17’s flight data recorder (black box), and/or actual reporting boots on the ground, a blizzard of propaganda raged in the Western mainstream media and from Western capitals. Blame was immediately assigned to Putin, Russia, and the Eastern Ukraine separatists. They were solely to blame for the malicious and calculated downing of Malaysian Flight MH17 and the cold-blooded murder of the 298 innocent people who happened to be aboard the plane that day. And any actual evidence supporting this claim was irrelevant and immaterial.

It was a troubling but familiar pattern for the West, reminiscent of “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (and the inevitable “mushroom cloud”),” the Serbian “Massacre of the Albanians,” Assad’s “gassing of his own people,” the “Tiananmen Square massacre,” and Iran’s possession of or soon-to-be possession of “nuclear-armed Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).”

The various headlines that filled Western airwaves and print media within hours of the downing of flight MH17 were unanimous:

“Here’s The Ridiculous Way Russia’s Propaganda Channel Is Covering The Downed Malaysian Airliner.”

— Pau Szoldra, Business Insider

“Hillary Clinton: Putin ‘bears responsibility’ in downing of MH17.”

— Jason Miks, CNN

“Miscalculation. Failure. Escalation — Why Putin Shot Down MH-17.”

— Greg Satell, Forbes

“Web evidence points to pro-Russian rebels in downing of MH17.”

— Arthur Bright, The Christian Science Monitor

US State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf in a July 22, 2014, press conference presented the US argument and her “strong assessment” why the “Russian-backed separatists” were responsible for the downing of Flight MH17. During Harf’s address she stated that, “We saw videos on social media,” that provided a “preponderance of evidence,” which was “backed by a lot of information,” and that that information was “common sense.” Further, Harf noted that should there be any alternative explanations as to the downing of Flight MH17, that those explanations would simply “defy logic.” It is also rather interesting that Harf’s “broad assessment” and her “host of information” had not taken into account the Russian Defense Ministries’ press conference wherein actual forensic data — satellite and radar data — were presented to the world. It is a press conference that must be seen to be believed, for the sophomoric assertions that Harf makes entirely free of logic or actual intelligence data. Nor does Harf appear to be embarrassed by the above.

Nearly seven months later Ms. Harf’s “preponderance of evidence” and her “host of information” remains top secret, invisible, and hush-hush. In the meantime there have been bushels of information, reports, and investigations that all point to a dramatically different conclusion than that preemptively reached by the West and spokesperson Harf’s State Department bosses.

the flight

At approximately 10:30 a.m. (GMT) on Thursday, July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Boeing 777, departed Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on route to Kuala Lumpur. The flight carried a total of 298 passengers and crew members. The pilot of MH17 had filed a flight plan, requesting to fly at 35,000 ft. throughout Ukrainian airspace, which was considered close to the optimum altitude.

The path that MH17 flight crew took on July 17 was a familiar one that had been traversed fourteen times over the course of the past two weeks. This path drew out a southeasterly diagonal across the length of Ukraine to the Sea of Azov, just east of Crimea (Pegues CBS Online 2014). On this day, however, flight MH17’s path was diverted from its normal route along the international air corridor, known as L980, some 300 miles north of its usual route, which would bring flight MH17 directly over a war zone. It is not clear as to why the route was changed or who was responsible for changing the route, though it is clear that Eurocontrol (European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation) was not responsible. To date, Kiev Air Traffic Control (KATC) has not been cleared of responsibility as the Air Traffic Control tapes were immediately confiscated by the Kiev military authorities at the time of the downing and have not been released.

The flight path, however, was only one of two crucial changes that may have led to the downing of the flight. Malaysian Airlines has confirmed that KATC instructed the pilot to fly at a lower altitude upon its entry into Ukrainian airspace (Chossudovsky 2014). The original flight plan called for a cruising altitude of 35,000 ft. KATC, however, ordered the pilot to lower flight MH17’s cruising altitude to 33,000 ft., directly over the Ukrainian war zone. It was an area where military planes, transports, and helicopters had all been shot down in the preceding days and weeks.

At 13:20, literally minutes before flight MH17 was shot down from the sky, the plane made an unscheduled “left turn,” that resulted in a 14km deviation from its already altered flight plan and a reduction in cruising speed from 580mph (933 kmph) to 124mph (200 kmph). The turn took MH17 directly over the Donetsk area, before the pilots attempted to realign with their altered flight plan. However, before the pilots were able to reestablish their flight path, MH17 dropped from altitude and disappeared from radar. The time was 13:23.

Immediately after flight MH17 crashed, Ukrainian officials of the coup-installed Kiev government confiscated the audio and all records of flight MH17.

Approximately two hours later, at 15:40, the Ukrainian government officially announced the downing of Flight MH17. Nearly half an hour later, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk ordered an investigation of MH17.

Approximately three hours later, 18:28, East Ukrainian freedom fighters located Flight MH17’s flight data recorders, black boxes.

At approximately 23:30, Malaysian Airlines confirmed that 298 passengers had been killed as a result of the downing of Flight MH17.

As mentioned earlier, blame was cast before the bodies of the men, women, and children had been removed from the crime scene, before the gathering of any evidence and prior to a forensic investigation or receipt of the plane’s black boxes.

Below are a number of events and factors that may shed some light on the downing of flight MH17.

the lay of the land

At the time of flight MH17’s downing in Eastern Ukraine, the area was rife with various Western militaries undertaking exercises that were premised on gathering intelligence and monitoring in real-time the events unfolding on land, air, and sea.

NATO, on that day, was conducting Operation Sea Breeze 2014 in the Black Sea approximately 40 miles from the Russian border. The operational mandate of Sea Breeze 2014 was to monitor commercial airline traffic throughout the region.

The military assets that NATO had employed for Operation Sea Breeze 2014, ranged from aircraft such as the Boeing EA-18G Growler and the Boeing E3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to electronic warfare and intelligence aircraft, to the AEGIS-class guided missile cruiser and the USS Vela Gulf. Between the AWACS and the AEGIS’s AN/SPY1 radar NATO had the ability to track aircraft over the whole of Ukrainian airspace and well into Russian Territory (Madsen 2014). Additionally, Flight MH17 would have appeared across multiple radar screens of NATO’s various intelligence assets.