MH17 shot down by Russians or separatists, says Paul Dibb

Malaysian airliner MH17 was ‘shot down by a Russian missile crew or by separatists trained by Russians’.

Commander Catherine Hayes and Paul Dibb in Sydney for the Future Summit.

Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile crew operating from Ukrainian territory, or at the very least by separatists trained by Russian military experts, says global defence specialist Paul Dibb.

“Let’s not kid ourselves that this complex bit of equipment could be operated by a coalminer or a sunflower farmer out of Donetsk,” Professor Dibb told The Australian.

The Soviet-era Buk SA-11 system used to shoot the aircraft down at 30,000ft was not the most modern Russian missile but it was still sophisticated and relatively complicated to operate, he said.

The Russian-made mobile launcher had to be appropriately located, the radar switched on, the fast-moving target located, tracked and “illuminated”, and the radar locked on to it. Then the missile had to be fired.

After MH17 was shot down on July 17 last year, pictures emerged of a mobile missile launcher crossing back into Russia with one of its four missiles missing.

It is believed the members of the missile crew thought they were firing at a Ukrainian military transport aircraft. A local rebel leader claimed his men had shot down a Ukrainian aircraft before he was told the bodies of many women and children had been found in the wreckage. Then the original claim was quickly withdrawn.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has denied his country was involved.

The separatists have also denied involvement and claimed they do not have a missile launcher capable of shooting down the aircraft.

But they had announced before the disaster that they had captured a Buk launcher from a Ukrainian military base in Donetsk.

There were 283 passengers and 15 crew on board the Boeing 777, including 38 who were Australians or Australian residents. All died in the missile blast or the crash that followed.