An hour before news of the crash, Igor Strelkov reportedly wrote on Vkontakte, a popular Russian social media website, “In the district of Torez an An-26 was just shot down. It crashed somewhere near the Progress mine. We warned them not to fly in our skies.”
The message was sent about 30 minutes after the plane is believed to have gone down. The post was later deleted and another post went up, blaming Ukrainian government forces for shooting down the passenger plane.
ScreenshotThe post, claiming responsibility for shooting down a military cargo plane, was deleted after news that a passenger plane crashed broke. Pic National Post[/caption][caption id="attachment_7918" align="alignright" width="400"]
Igor Strelkov - Pic Reuters[/caption]The Ukrainian military has not said an AN-26 was brought down leading to speculation that Strelkov might have mis-identified MH17 as a military transport plane.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the downing an act of terrorism and called for an international investigation into the crash. He insisted that his forces did not shoot down the plane.
Ukraine’s security services produced what they said were two intercepted telephone conversations that they said showed rebels were responsible. In the first call, the security services said, rebel commander Igor Bezler tells a Russian military intelligence officer that rebel forces shot down a plane.
In the second, two rebel fighters – one of them at the scene of the crash – say the rocket attack was carried out by a unit of insurgents about 25 kilometers north of the crash site.
The rebels have already claimed responsibility for surface-to-air missile attacks on two Ukraine jets, although the Ukraine military says only one hit their jet, forcing the pilot to eject. On Monday, Ukraine said one of its military transport planes was shot down by a missile fired from Russian territory, which rebels also took credit for.
The New York Times says that Stelkov [real name Igor Girkin] “is a figure as mysterious as he is fearsome.”
Strelkov, 43, is a Russian citizen from Moscow who is now in command of the Donbass People’s Militia and has hero status among insurgency supporters. He was reportedly trained by Russia’s military intelligence unit and both Ukraine and the West have claimed he is an active Russian agent.
However, since taking control of the separatists, observers say he seems to be making many moves that do not appear to be in Russia’s interests.
Strelkov has also been openly critical of Moscow for not providing enough aid, raising questions of whether the Kremlin would be able to bring him to any future peace talks.
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