Observers Cry Foul Over Kyiv’s Release of Key Witness in Flight MH17 Probe

This story originated in Last week, a Ukrainian court released Vyshinsky on his own recognizance as he awaits trial on charges of high treason that were brought against him in 2018.Tsemakh’s release also comes a day after a group of 40 members of the European Parliament wrote a letter urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy not to include Tsemakh in any deal, calling him a “key suspect” in the missile launch that killed all 298 Flight MH17 passengers and crew, most of whom were Malaysia-bound Dutch nationals.Officials from an international Dutch-led investigation have voiced concerns that transferring Tsemakh to Russian soil will make it impossible to question him about the case.Peace vs. prosecutionInternational observers such as Activists of Ukrainian nationalist groups protest a court decision to release on bail Volodymyr Tsemakh, suspected of involvement in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sept. 5, 2019.Security analyst Christo Grozev, with research group Bellingcat, first reported that Tsemakh might be released as part of the prisoner exchange. Grozev says Kremlin demands for Tsemakh’s release are part of a broader effort to delegitimize the MH17 investigation.”It’s not going to change the amount of evidence the investigation team has gathered — the proof will still be there — but there will be significant damage done to the perceived legitimacy of the court procedures, or at least that’s what the Kremlin will try to argue,” Grozev told VOA.Without an indicted suspect or witness to take the stand in a Netherlands courtroom, Grozev said, Russia won’t need to send a legal team, giving the court procedures the appearance of a one-sided case.Three Russians and a Ukrainian were indicted over the downing of flight MH17, and court proceedings in the Netherlands are scheduled for March. But the four suspects most likely will be tried in absentia.Although Tsemakh was not one of the four indicted, Grozev calls him the only person who had been in Ukrainian custody and who could firmly link high-ranking Russian military personnel to the 2014 disappearance.”A lot of (valuable information) is already objectively there, but he can provide information about the chain of command, which is something that is not completely clear to the investigation,” Grozev said. “He can provide information about who were the people that allowed for this to happen, allowed for the [Russian-made] Buk [anti-aircraft missile system] with a crew to be handed over.”He would have provided confirmation about the people that were members of this crew,” Grozev added, explaining that individual soldiers would not be indicted.”The Dutch investigators will be looking for the chain of command, people who gave the instructions, and not the soldiers.”Threats and denialsRussia has always denied responsibility for shooting down the commercial passenger flight and claimed last year that the Buk missile came from Ukrainian army arsenals, but never provided solid evidence.FILE – Wreckage of the MH17 airplane is seen after the presentation of the final report into the crash of July 2014 of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine in Gilze Rijen, the Netherlands, Oct. 13, 2015.The MH17 investigation team, made up of detectives and prosecutors from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine, last year said that it was convinced that the Buk missile system used to shoot down flight MH17 came from a Russian army brigade.The Netherlands and Australia have said they hold Moscow responsible for providing the Buk missile system.Conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed forces has killed an estimated 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine since 2014. Although a cease-fire deal ended major conflict there in 2015, small-scale clashes still occur regularly.The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) apprehended Tsemakh on June 27 in the Donetsk regional city of Snizhne, which is held by Moscow-backed separatists and is 20 kilometers from the Russian border.According to the Dutch-led investigation, the Buk missile was fired six kilometers south of Snizhne.TV footage obtained by Current Time, a Russian-language network run by VOA and Radio Free Europe, showed Tsemakh claiming that he was in charge of an anti-aircraft unit and that he helped hide the missile system in July 2014.He also shows the interviewer where the Boeing-777 civilian airliner went down.
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