The Dutch Joint Investigation Team surprised the world by unexpectedly announcing the results of their nearly four-year-long probe into what happened on that fateful day, declaring that a Russian-supplied missile was used during the attack and therefore implying some level of state culpability for this crime. Moscow immediately shot back and said that the video footage that was used as "evidence" actually showed an old missile that was decommissioned in 2011 and built back during the late-Soviet era in 1986.
Moreover, Moscow pointed out how it wasn't allowed to fully participate in this investigation and that the Dutch team ignored the radar data that Russia provided to them. In addition, Russian officials also said that the radio intercepts that were presented as "proof" that the East Ukrainian rebels shot down the airliner were faked by Kiev's intelligence services, and that the investigation relied too much on social networks and NGOs such as Bellingcat that are known for their fabrications. The heavy doubt that's cast on the investigators' conclusions as a result of their biased proceedings explains why the Russian Ambassador to Australia described the Dutch report as a "preliminarily planned provocation".
In what's highly unlikely to be a coincidence, the MH17 infowar returned to the news with full intensity just two weeks prior to the start of the World Cup in Russia, causing many commentators to note that it might have been deliberately timed to diminish the soft power boost that Russia's set to receive from hosting this world famous event. Four years earlier, the West manufactured another infowar provocation against Russia during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games by falsely alleging that the government was discriminating against homosexuals, but the exploitation of the MH17 tragedy as a reputational weapon against the country is unprecedented in scale, scope, and significance.
The message that the West is sending couldn't be clearer, and it's that Russia is supposedly a "rogue state" that shoots down civilian airliners with impunity and should therefore be boycotted, but the reality is that this narrative is an infowar manipulation wielded by Western governments against the minds of their own citizens.
Petri Krohn, Finnish political commentator, and Marcus Godwyn, Political commentator, commented on the issue.
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