A Russian military officer personally pushed the launch button on surface-to-air missiles that blew Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 out of the sky, a senior Ukrainian official said Tuesday.
The stunning revelation was made by Vitaly Nayda, Ukraine’s director of informational security, according to CNN.
Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, using a Russian-made Buk missile system, had been blamed for the midair slaughter that killed 298 people last Thursday.
US intelligence found that a 150-truck convoy — carrying rocket launchers, tanks and other military hardware — had recently rolled into rebel-held eastern Ukraine from southwest Russia.
The Russians also provided training in use of these air-defense systems, according to US intelligence.
But Nayda’s revelation now brings the mass murder directly to Moscow’s doorstep.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Russia’s fingerprints have been all over this tragedy from the start. And whether an itchy Russian trigger finger actually pushed the button is almost irrelevant, according to McCain, former ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We know it was Russia that caused this whole turmoil,” McCain told CNN Tuesday. “Whether it is a Russian [who pushed the button] or not is really not too vital in deciding that Vladimir Putin is a KGB colonel and international pariah.”
A train carrying most of the victims’ remains finally arrived in the government-controlled Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Tuesday.
Of the nearly 300 Flight MH17 victims, 198 were Dutch citizens, and Amsterdam expects to have the remains back in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
“It is our aim — and at the moment our expectation — that sometime tomorrow, the first plane carrying victims will leave for Eindhoven,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.