While the world watched in horror as a passenger jet was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine this week, Kiev and Moscow quickly fell into roles they’ve grown accustomed with in recent months ... blaming one another.
Ukrainian officials were quick to say the cause was a surface-to-air missile system in rebel hands. The Buk air defence system can hit aircraft flying at altitudes of up to 25km, far above the 10,000m standard cruising height for civilian liners.
The rebels responded that they only possess portable missiles capable of reaching altitudes of 6,000m.
The first question would become: how and when did the rebels get the Buks, if they do indeed have them?
Russian state media reported last month that the rebels had seized an army base with Buks - the Ukrainian defence ministry then stated that the missiles had been moved to safety just in time.
The Ukrainian Security Sercie SBU yesterday published audio tapes as evidence that the separatists received Buk systems from Russia.
Photos and videos published on sprotyv.info, a site run by Ukrainian pro-government activists, claimed to show a Buk carrier on a lorry on Thursday near Snizhne, a city close to the crash site.
Military analyst Dmytro Tymchuk, who runs the site, claimed earlier this week that more and more Russian officers in uniforms without national markings were appearing in eastern Ukraine.
Undeniably, the separatists have been targeting Ukrainian military planes all this week. They shot down an An-26 transport plane with eight people on board on Monday and a Su-25 fighter plane on Wednesday. In both cases, the Ukrainian government alleged that the shots were fired from Russian territory.
And, at about the time of Thursday’s fatal crash, rebel leaders claimed to have shot down another Ukrainian An-26. It soon turned out, however, that this was Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The Ukrainian Security Service even published a tapped phone conversation in which rebel commanders boast about the downing of a plane - which then turned out to be a civilian one with foreigners on board.
However, quite a few experts in Russia expressed doubts about these theories.
“The Ukrainians shot (the plane) down and now they are concealing it,” Magomed Tolboyev, a prominent fighter pilot told the Interfax news agency. Tolboyev argued that, even if the insurgents had gotten hold of sophisticated missile systems like Buk, they lacked personnel qualified to operate it.
Russian state television yesterday reminded viewers that the Ukrainian military had shot down a civilian jet by mistake before.
In 2001, all 78 people on board a Tupolev 154 of Russia’s Sibir Airways were killed when their plane was hit by a missile over the Black Sea. It took Ukrainian authorities eight days to accept responsibility.
The Russian defence ministry said in a statement that Thursday’s crash site was in range of two Ukrainian S-200 missile bases and three Buk defence systems. They added that Russian military intelligence had detected radar activity from the Buk systems.
But, despite all this, Russian politicians were unusually cautious yesterday. While President Vladimir Putin only said that Ukraine bears responsibility because the tragedy happened over its territory, prominent anti-Western officials like Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Duma foreign policy chairman Alexei Pushkov were silent.