Conclusion Forthcoming

"[Investigations have established the parts] probably are parts of a missile system and probably a Buk missile system."
"[The parts] are of particular interest to the criminal investigation as they can possibly provide more information about who was involved in the crash of MH17."
Fred Westerbeke, Dutch investigator-prosecutor

People walk amid the debris at the crash site of passenger plane MH17 near the village of Grabovo, July 17, 2014.  (Photo: AP)

One must assume that the Dutch investigators leading the inquiry into the source of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 explosion killing 298 people on board also plan to take into account the telephone conversations between the Ukrainian rebel leader and his Russian military adviser, which conversation revealed the likely perpetrator of the attack. And, as well, the first-hand account by journalists reporting seeing a Buk missile system being driven through the area where the plane was shot down.

This image, provided by and reproduced with the permission of Paris Match, is the second of two images of the MH17 linked Buk missile launcher taken in Donestk, the first of which was published in Paris Match on July 25th. Here we can see much more of the Buk missile launcher, including the netting covering the rear of the Buk that was also visible in the photograph of the Buk missile launcher taken in Torez on July 17th

The announcement that prosecutors have physical evidence of a missile which intelligence had assumed from existing circumstantial evidence implicated both the Ukrainian ethnic-Russian rebels and their Russian mentors does bespeak a new opportunity to find a definitive answer to the still-simmering question. Still, investigators caution no conclusion may yet be drawn "that there is a causal connection between the discovered parts and the crash of flight MH17".

The parts in question have been in the hands of the prosecutors investigating the calamitous event for awhile; found by Dutch recovery missions to the crash site. Which rebel militias had prior to the arrival of the investigators gone to great trouble to clean up as much as possible. But the debris from the explosion was airborne and scattered over a large area and obviously not everything could be detected and removed.

The Russian-backed Ukraine rebels clumsily accused the Ukrainian military of having shot down Flight 17 heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The international criminal investigation ongoing is expected to take months yet before completion, but the Dutch Safety Board report is expected to be available by the end of October.

A preliminary report of a year ago stated that evidence from the crash was consistent with an attack by a surface-to-air missile. That report went no further, by-passing an effort to assign responsibility, at that time. However, at this juncture, with the confirmation of physical evidence that a missile did indeed bring down the Malaysian Airline passenger jet, the mystery should soon enough be solved.

News reports, inclusive of one appearing in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, state that the missile system which was used to shoot down the passenger jet was one that was supplied by the Russian military. A conclusion that was presupposed on the evidence available shortly after the disaster, and ready now to be expanded upon and to be made definitively public.

Moscow, without doubt, will be prepared to respond with a massive shrug.