You folks were super enthusiastic about my posting more on Mastodon, so let's try this.
RT/boost and let's see if there's interest in a regular #Ukraine thread!
Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
For the last year, I've been tracking a notorious Russian unit known for its role in killing 100s of civilians.
This past month we published how we found them.
In May of last year, I came across these missile cases in a small village called Novyi Bykiv.
They were sitting outside a rec center in an area that had been liberated by Ukrainian forces just weeks before.
You can see on the case how it starts with the serial number 9M317... the 9M317 is a missile used for what is called the Buk missile system.
... the same system that shot down MH17 in eastern Ukraine back in 2014, killing hundreds of civilians.
So we need to back up and provide some context here:
On a summer day in 2014, a civilian commercial flight was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lampur.
A Russian unit supplied the missile system that shot down the plane in Eastern Ukraine.
All 298 passengers/crew died.
Having departed from Amsterdam, it was, as one Dutch person told me, The Netherland's version of 9/11.
Der Spiegel:
"Overflights in a radius of almost 140 kilometers around the Ukrainian industrial metropolis in the past seven days were recorded. The Russian airline Aeroflot is at the forefront (86 overflights in one week). Singapore Airlines (75), Ukraine International Airlines (62) and Lufthansa (56) follow. In addition, there are nine Lufthansa Cargo flights for the German company."
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/malaysia-airlines-mh17-lufthansa-ueberflog-ost-ukraine-56-mal-a-981813.html
Die Katastrophe von Flug MH17 hätte womöglich auch eine Maschine aus Deutschland treffen können. Daten eines Tracking-Dienstes zeigen: Allein die Lufthansa überflog in den vergangenen Tagen 56-mal die Krisenregion in der Ostukraine.
Tim Mak
Aguilar
nhan