An notorious Russian unit that downed a civilian aircraft in 2014 was lively in Ukraine

KHARKIV, Ukraine — On the outdated sweet firm warehouse on Partisan Road in Izium, Ukraine, indicators of the Russian occupation have been in all places. An artillery spherical sat close to one of many partitions. Throughout, the stays of homes lay in rubble, with caved-in partitions and no roofs.

Native resident Oleksiy Zadniprovskiy greeted us there, together with a chained-up guard canine. After the Russian troops left, he and his crew of humanitarian staff moved in to assist the just lately liberated space recuperate.

Zadniprovskiy launched us to Ruslan, a volunteer who declined to offer his final identify as a result of he feared hazard if the Russians return. Even now, the constructing is lower than 100 kilometers from Bakhmut, the flashpoint for ongoing preventing in jap Ukraine.

Ruslan instructed us what we might come there to be taught: that he heard and noticed anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the neighborhood of the complicated whereas the world was underneath Russian occupation.

The outdated warehouse, adorned with banners of Western beers like Budweiser and Corona Further, had been the momentary headquarters of a Russian anti-aircraft unit. Prosecutors within the Kharkiv area of Ukraine confirmed that. They confirmed us a doc confiscated after the Russian retreat that named the unit’s commander, together with his cellphone quantity and name signal — “Вoлда́й,” — together with the handle for his or her headquarters.

The sources and documentation additionally confirmed it wasn’t simply any anti-aircraft unit.

It was the 53rd Anti-Plane Missile Brigade, among the many most infamous — and needed — items within the Russian army.

The 53rd is finest recognized for its function in capturing down Malaysia Airways Flight MH17 in 2014 because it flew over Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew died.

“You’ll be able to regard the downing of Flight MH17 [as the] Dutch 9/11,” stated Brechtje van de Moosdijk, a spokesperson for the Joint Investigation Crew exploring the civilian airline assault. “When it occurred, it was a scorching summer time’s day, July 17, 2014. All people was completely satisfied and on holidays or mendacity within the backyard or on the swimming pool. After which this aircraft was downed.”

And the 53rd has been a global pariah ever since, a minimum of as a lot as conflict crimes investigators are involved. The truth that the unit is working in Ukraine nonetheless at present? It is just like the Russian president taunting the remainder of the world.

“This unit, after it shot down Malaysia Airways Flight 17… didn’t face any retribution. They didn’t face any justice for the crimes they dedicated,” stated George Barros, a Russia analyst on the Institute for the Research of Battle. “And sadly, that is very a lot systematic in the best way that the Russian Federation has been in a position to violate worldwide legislation.”

On the path of the 53rd Brigade

Ukrainian army and intelligence sources instructed NPR that the 53rd Brigade was lively over a lot of 2022 within the Kharkiv area, an space within the northeast of Ukraine close to the Russian border.

However there was little concrete proof of the unit’s particular location. The 53rd Brigade makes a speciality of anti-aircraft missile methods. In contrast to infantry or mechanized items, they don’t struggle on the entrance strains, the place open-source pictures of captured prisoners of conflict can be utilized to supply details about a unit’s actions and whereabouts.

“Militaries undertake important efforts to attempt to cover their vital key battlefield belongings,” defined Barros. “The 53rd is definitely a type of as a result of it is designed to guard the front-line items from air assaults.”

Ukraine retook management of the Kharkiv area in September of final 12 months. Throughout that interval of preventing, Ukrainian forces retrieved some paperwork Russian forces left behind at an deserted headquarters within the Kharkiv area.

One of many paperwork listed the army items that Russian forces had within the Izium space. On the seventeenth line, there was details about the 53rd that we had been searching for.

“I can verify that now we have info that for a while they have been settled within the Izium district, within the Kharkiv area,” Oleksandr Philchakov, the lead prosecutor for the Kharkiv area, instructed NPR. Philchakov was monitoring numerous Russian items as a part of his workplace’s efforts to prosecute alleged conflict crimes.

Barros reviewed the doc and located it regarded genuine. He additionally identified that the data matches different open-source details about the place the 53rd’s affiliated items have been.

The affirmation that the brigade had been preventing in Izium might be vital to Ukrainian and Western prosecutors seeking to discover justice for attainable conflict crimes, to not point out the households of the victims of MH17.

A infamous historical past

The connection between the 53rd Brigade and Malaysia Airways Flight 17 was first made by open-source investigators at Bellingcat.

Individually, a Joint Investigation Crew made up of a number of international locations that misplaced residents because of the downing of MH17 concluded after years of work {that a} missile system equipped by the 53rd Brigade was behind the crash.

Final month at The Hague, the Joint Investigation Crew announced some last findings and provided beautiful new particulars. The investigators performed intercepted cellphone calls of Russian-backed separatists that have been preventing in jap Ukraine in 2014.

Utilizing these calls, investigators concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself was in the end behind the switch of an anti-aircraft system — the identical system that ultimately shot down Flight MH17. It underscored that the 53rd Brigade’s deadly actions have been at Putin’s course.

Russian-backed separatists within the space after the aircraft crashed did not seem to point out remorse for the incident, based on Russian army professional Tom Bullock.

“There are a number of pictures discovered on their social media accounts exhibiting them posing subsequent to mess from the plane, standing subsequent to the Malaysia Airways brand and posing for pictures for his or her social media,” Bullock stated.

The unit’s painful legacy

Piet Ploeg misplaced his brother, his brother’s spouse and their son on the aircraft. His brother’s stays have been by no means recognized.

“I at all times say our members of the family have been, actually, the primary non-Ukrainian victims of a conflict that began eight years in the past,” he stated. “So all the pieces [that] provides us details about the function of Russia in Ukraine is, for us, vital as a result of it helps us to kind … world opinion concerning the function of Russia in Ukraine.”

The affirmation of the 53rd’s current actions can be vital for individuals like Silene Fredriksz, whose son was killed within the downing of MH17.

“Our lives modified fully. We had a household with 5 youngsters, and now they’re solely 4,” she stated. “And nothing, and no one, can fill within the gaps that they left. It hits you in each side of your life. I am not the identical individual as I used to be earlier than. It is a life earlier than and a life after. And it’s extremely arduous. Nonetheless very arduous.”

She’s paid particular consideration to the 53rd and remains to be haunted by the unit’s lethal choices. Details about the unit and the Russian army’s actions assist her course of her grief.

“[I] watch all the pieces that has something to do with the conflict now occurring and all the pieces that has to do with MH17, Russia, Ukraine,” she stated. “I’ll by no means have closure. … However after we get to know a part of the reality, [it] provides us relaxation.”

Shortly earlier than the publication of this story, President Vladimir Putin signed a brand new decree concerning the 53rd Brigade.

Apparently unconcerned about how it might look to the skin world, he ordered that the unit be given a brand new honorary designation: the title of “Guards,” a time period reserved for supposedly elite Russian items.