The still unnamed source visited the editorial office of Russia’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper earlier this week and provided his eye-witness account of what happened on July 17th. He claims that a Su-25 fighter jet flown by Cpt. Voloshin departed from Aviatorskoye air base carrying two air-to-air missiles but returned without them, and that the pilot frighteningly muttered such statements as “wrong plane” and that “the plane happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Such a version of events could have been easily been taken for a lie had the witness not passed a polygraph administered by Russia’s Investigative Committee. Deepening the intrigue, Voloshin, the prime suspect, seems to have disappeared.
Provided that the account is true (which has thus far not been disproven, even by polygraph), then an absolutely different picture begins to emerge about the devastating events of July 17th that completely contrasts with Kiev’s official narrative. Since the whole world is already familiar with the West’s side of the story, let’s look at the new version of how events may have played out.
Countering Kiev’s Narrative
At the time of the tragedy, Kiev was at the height of its punitive operation against the citizens of Eastern Ukraine, who had refused to recognize the legitimacy of the February 22nd coup and the new authorities’ hyper-nationalist policies and interpretations of history. The US had been weighing in on stories about an alleged “Russian invasion” of Ukraine since February, despite never providing any unquestionable proof that this ever occurred. Russia Insider, an English-language online news portal about Russia, even republished an article which counted 15 separate instances of this supposed “Russian invasion” from late February until the time of the crash, eventually totaling a whopping 36 when extended to mid-November. Obviously, such intense US-sponsored information warfare and perception management operations had the effect of scaring Ukrainians and putting them on edge about the phantom invasion that seemed to be always on the horizon (if not already making headway within the country itself).
This was the psychological setting in which Cpt. Voloshin would have departed for a combat operation on July 17th. According to the unnamed witness, Kiev’s fighters were not regularly equipped with air-to-air missiles since the Novorossiyan Armed Forces were not thought to have any air units under their command. However, it may have been that MH17, mysteriously redirected by Ukrainian air control to fly over the war zone, was mistakenly thought to be a Russian military plane of some sorts. This would have demonstrated confirmation bias on the side of Kiev’s military, which had been continually inundated with the false message that Russia was about to launch an imminent invasion (if it hadn’t done so already).
Without taking a moment to break out of the groupthink mentality and consider the grave implications if they were wrong, senior-level individuals may have ordered Cpt. Voloshin into combat to take down what they thought was an invading Russian aircraft, which would explain why an exception would have been made to send an air-to-air missile-equipped fighter jet into a war zone where no known hostile air units had ever been sighted. Voloshin may not have realized the deadly error until it was too late, which may have been why he said what he did upon landing about the “wrong plane”, likely out of shock at what he had just done.
Differing Responses
Kiev and the West officially responded with the knee-jerk reaction of blaming Russia and the East Ukrainian pro-sovereignty movement for the tragedy. Through a confusing and contradictory mix of messages, they alleged all sorts of conspiracies, ridiculously ranging from Russia’s purposeful downing of the jet to unfounded accusations that the East Ukrainians used Russian-supplied surface-to-air missiles to bring it down. No matter the version, one thread was consistent, and it was that Russia was either directly or indirectly linked to the crash and must therefore be punished as a pariah state. More sanctions were enacted against Russia and the New Cold War intensified.
This whole time, however, Russia was urging for a more calm and rational response to prevail, reminding the world not to let speculative emotions and one-sided accusations get in the way of an unbiased investigation. Offering to immediately aid in such efforts, Russia voluntarily released radar data that it claimed showed a Ukrainian fighter jet in near the vicinity of flight MH17 moments before the crash, implicating that it may have played a role in the tragedy. Compounding this, Der Spiegel reported in late October that the chief Dutch prosecutor investigating the incident did not rule out that the plane may have been shot down from the air. All of this would corroborate witness statements from the ground which had said from the beginning that a fighter jet shot down the passenger airliner. This week’s disclosure, however, is the first time that an inside source from the Ukrainian side has confirmed the theory of Kiev’s complicity.
Two Planes, Two Self-Fulfilling Prophecies?
MH17, which now increasingly appears to have been mistakenly shot down by Kiev’s forces, wasn’t the first Malaysian plane to crash in 2014. On March 8th, contact was lost with MH370, which is thought to have then crashed somewhere in Southeast Asia or the Indian Ocean. Former French airline CEO and novelist Marc Dugain recently proposed that it may have also been mistakenly shot down, albeit this time by US and British forces from their Diego Garcia island base. Dugain, while presently there is no evidence regarding this, suggests that the passenger jet may have approached the fortified island and been mistaken for an attempted 9/11-style suicide attack. Since the plane had lost contact with the outside world and may not have been able to send or receive any communications, the order could have been given to shoot it down out of extreme caution.
Looked at back-to-back, a very disturbing pattern may have been at play with both Malaysian planes. As regards MH370, the US’ paranoia about a 9/11 repeat may have become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the plane approached Diego Garcia without being able to communicate, leading to the command to take it down. Likewise, with MH17 over Eastern Ukraine, Kiev’s manufactured belief (influenced by false US media and government statements) that a Russian invasion was imminent (or already happened) may have contributed to another self-fulfilling prophecy which also resulted in orders to take down a civilian aircraft. In both instances, each suspected guilty party was mentally conditioned to prepare for some kind of seemingly imminent hostile attack, and the moment something appeared which could confirm their bias, it could have been shot down and blamed on other actors or events once the horrifying truth behind each mistake was finally understood by those who did it.
