The main disinformation narratives continue to be recycled with slight variations: Ukrainian pilots shot down the aircraft, Ukraine destroyed evidence to cover up its responsibility, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is lying to victimize innocent Russia.
May-June 2018 saw a huge upsurge in fresh disinformation cases about MH17, largely due to the JIT’s announcement on 24 May that the plane was downed by a Russian missile from territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
On 29 May, the EU anti-fake news watchdog EUvsDisinfo had debunked a total of 57 individual cases of disinformation related to MH17.
By 27 June, this figure had reached 89.
Among the latest cases, the Russian state news agency TASS cited the defence ministry as claiming that no anti-aircraft missile system had ever crossed into Ukraine from Russia.
The JIT was also accused of deliberately withholding information about the missile to harm Russia, and Sputnik described the investigators’ accusations as part of a concerted NATO campaign against Russia.
Further reading:
- Flight MH17 three years on: getting the truth out of Eastern Ukraine
- Flight MH17: Why can’t the Kremlin tell the truth?
- Defensive disinformation as decoy flare: Skripal and Flight MH17
- MH17: Time is Running Out for Disinformation
- Retracing the steps of a disinformation campaign
- Why did Russia close its airspace near Donbas one day before flight MH17 was downed?
- Ukraine had no reason to close its airspace above 10 000 m before MH17 disaster | Infographic
- Will there be justice for MH17 victims?
- Russian media forge more papers to blame Ukraine of downing MH17, make bad grammar mistakes
- Novaya Gazeta identifies Russian colonel involved in shooting down MH17
- MH17: Crime without punishment
- Moscow may soon blame extraterrestrials for MH17 catastrophe, Russian aviation expert says
- Bellingcat narrows list of possible MH17 culprits from Russian 53rd Brigade to 20 servicemen
- The most comprehensive guide ever to MH17 conspiracies
- Placing MH17 disaster in context, ahead of Dutch report
- Russia’s MH17 narrative: a year of self-incrimination
- Putin’s MH17 nightmare: an international tribunal
- A guide to Russian propaganda: Rapid fire conspiracy theories
- One year later, what do we know about the MH17 tragedy?
- Fake concern about “fake news” is a part of Kremlin’s deception strategy