From Ukraine village, new evidence on downing of flight MH17

Villagers in eastern Ukraine have told Reuters they saw a missile flying directly overhead just before Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot out of the sky on July 17 last year, providing the most detailed accounts to date that suggest it was fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels. The accounts from four villagers of Chervonyi Zhovten, which was then, and is now, controlled by the rebels, are significant because they indicate the rocket was in the early stages of its flight path. That would mean it must have been launched from rebel ground nearby, challenging the suggestion of Moscow and the separatists that the plane was brought down by the Ukrainian military.

You can come up with whatever you want. The most that we, the rebels, were operating is the PZRK (shoulder-launched missile system). The ceiling for the PZRK is up to 4 km.

Pro-Russian rebel commander Andrei Purgin

Until now, videos, photographs and accounts from residents have pointed to a BUK battery being delivered to the rebel-held town of Snizhne, 7 km north of Chervonyi Zhovten, on July 17, and then driven away from the area some time later. Its precise location at the time the plane was shot down has never been confirmed. Now one of the villagers has told Reuters that a missile battery was positioned in a field near Chervonyi Zhovten on the day the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed to earth. A former rebel fighter corroborated this. Ukraine’s defense ministry declined to comment for this story. A top rebel commander, Andrei Purgin, said the separatists did not have any weapon capable of downing a plane at cruise altitude.

I saw it was flying, flew right over me. I saw smoke in the sky, then I heard an explosion and I saw a huge blue (cloud of) smoke.

Villager Olga Krasilnikova, 30, said she saw a rocket, some time between 4 and 5 p.m.