Ukrainian Deceit: Russian Honour

"This wasn't ours. Why would we do this? We're not animals."
"This is a direct provocation of the European Union and the United States. You see our weapons."
We started to win the war and the fascists did this to stop us."
Alexei, ethnic Russian rebel, Ukraine

"[They ... Kyiv government officials] must be walking from Kyiv. It was very difficult to get written approval for us to move the bodies to ensure that later they couldn't say that we savages had left the people in the sun."
Andrei Purgin, ethnic Russian, Hrabov, Ukraine

Sergei Kavtaradze, from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic stated that 196 corpses had been carefully removed from the 25 kilometre-site of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet explosion, to be held in safety within refrigerated rail cars in the town of Torez. "They will stay there for now, until the issue is resolved. We are waiting for the experts."


The train car is locked as a refrigerated train loaded with bodies of the passengers prepares to depart the station in Torez. Photo / AP

That would be, no doubt, the experts from the Organization for Security and Cooperation n Europe, the very crash investigators that were permitted a whole 75 minutes at the site where they were hurried on and refused continued access to the crash site. They did witness, however, militiamen with the 'Donetsk Republic' behaving like the drunken thugs that they are who threatened them by firing shots in the air close to where they were attempting their investigation.

One rebel leader spat out that the Kyiv government was taking its time in appearing at the site just to make it appear as though the separatists were disinterested in taking adequate care of the corpses. Though, in fact, it was groups of men who were volunteers rounded up, coal miners still in their mining clothing who were tasked with carrying out the gruesome ingathering of corpses with respect.

"We only take the bodies with documents" said Toleq, a tractor driver. "We are shift working, it is very hard emotionally They are the same as us, they died for nothing and the same is happening in our country. There are a lot of children." In fact, yes, 80 children among the 298 dead. Removed by the volunteers as they were decomposing in the heat of the fields. Locals had witnessed a horrendous event, seeing bodies falling out of the sky.

"They were twisting and turning", said one woman, like "a flock of birds or sunflowers spilling from a glass". What a lovely, poetic metaphor for a gruesome death. From the village of Rozsypne, Larisa spoke of objects landing with explosive force and terrifying noise around her. Debris rained on the village for ten minutes, she said, as the cockpit of the Boeing 777 landed whole along with the first few rows of first class seats in a field of sunflowers beyond the village.


Toys and flowers placed at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Photo / AP

Some bodies close to the village of Grabova were burned by fires. Ukrainian miners scoured the fields walking in lines, dressed in soiled working clothes and hard hats. Journalists in the first hours after the crash claimed that some 'helpers' had helped themselves to items taken from the cockpit crash site, loading their waiting cars with stolen objects. Knapsacks had been gathered by the road, some of them opened.

Locals placed flowers on body bags that remained by the roadside at the crash site. Among the locals one theory was that the aircraft was a "ghost flight" full of dead bodies, deliberately blown apart by the Ukrainian military for the very purpose of making it appear that Russian separatists had done the deed. How else to explain, they said, the advanced state of decomposition and the "lack of blood" visible?

"The bodies were put in a plane deliberately, then it deviated from the flight plan, and probably exploded from the inside. I think almost everyone shares this viewpoint. This can only be shot down with heavy equipment, and only the Ukraine army can use it", said one separatist knowingly, taking his authority from the fact he was once a pilot in the Czech air force.

What of the grieving relatives of those victims who will most certainly appear to visit the scene of the disaster in the near future? "If relatives turn up, more than likely they are part of the play", he soberly stated. With authority.


A satellite image shows the primary crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Photo / Airbus DS/AllSource Analysis/AP