There are only four months left before a particularly bloody episode of the war in eastern Ukraine comes to court in the Netherlands. It is the downing of the passenger aircraft with flight number MH17 in the summer of 2014, which killed all inmates on board, 298 people.
But it not easy to conduct a process when the prime suspect is a whole state - Russia.
The investigators of the "Joint Investigation Team" (JIT) have long since reconstructed that the shooting down of the Malaysian Boeing was done with an anti-aircraft missile of the Russian army. They have also named four suspects, including three Russian citizens. But Moscow refuses any assistance. Therefore, the JIT is still looking for witnesses and therefore always goes back to the public with material.
The amazing thing about the JIT's recent appeal is that it has only indirectly to do with the launch of the Boeing. The investigators are apparently concerned with fixing an overall picture: that Moscow established virtually full control over the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
"All local field commanders are being hounded out of their units"
This is to be occupied with 20 audio files, which made the JIT on YouTube accessible. These are intercepted telephone conversations of separatists in the Donbass among themselves and with Russian authorities. The material, if it is confirmed, explosive findings: For the first time, the name of Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu appears in the investigation.
For example, a combatant named "Mongol" at the beginning of July 2014 told his fellow Sasha from Makeyevka near Donetsk that the local rebels' abilities are now being tidied up: "People come here with powers of Shojgu, and all local field commanders will be out of their units fucked to the hell, and come to the forefront of Moscow. "
He explains: "We are moving towards a unified leadership, a serious war, and the field commanders are all getting under the knife because they've gone too far, robbing, raping, killing, playing politics me, Sasha ", so the" Mongol ".
FSB provided tap-proof phones
The already familiar interference of Russian intelligence services in eastern Ukraine will be underpinned with new facts. For example, the FSB has made tap-proof phones available to leading members of the "Donetsk People's Republic".
Evidently, on July 3, 2014, Sergei Dubinskij - one of the four suspects in the MH17 trial - reports in an interview. However, some of the telephone recordings seem to prove that these phones are not yet tap-proof - or not used properly.
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Several phone calls show how far the Kremlin's control of the separatists went: the most telling is a 20-minute conversation, which apparently took place on July 3, 2014, between the senior Kremlin official Vladislav Surkov and the "Prime Minister" of the People's Republic Donetsk ", Alexander Borodaj, was conducted.
For example, in the telephone conversation "Surkov" admits a mistake: The merger of the two "People's Republics" in Donetsk and Lugansk into a federal state proclaimed by the "parliaments" was based on a misunderstanding - his assistants had accidentally given the wrong template sent for the constitutional act.
However, Moscow's control in Donbass is limited by the fact that there is still chaos there. "This is not the Crimea," warns "Borodaj", whose people are currently engaged in a petty war against another field commander, Igor Besler aka "Bes".
"He has bad goals and will destroy you all"
Particularly explosive, but not for Russia, is another piece of information that comes from the same phone call:
- Accordingly, the Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov - richest man in the country - asked for a meeting with Kremlin Advisor Surkov days before the conversation.
- Akhmetov himself comes from Donetsk, he was considered the most powerful man in Donbass until the conflict. His attitude to the rebels was initially unclear until he fled from the conflict to Kiev.
- "I did not want to meet him, he waited patiently for three hours in the restaurant," says "Surkov" with a laugh. Akhmetov spoke "with his former patron" - meaning apparently the ousted and fled to Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych.
- The latter had proposed to him "as instructed" to participate in negotiations on the part of the "People's Republic", but Akhmetov had refused.
- Conversely, he asked if he could travel to Donetsk. "Surkov" warns in the phone call "Borodaj" before such a visit - "he has bad goals and will decompose all of you."
The authenticity of the recordings has not been confirmed, the statements in it, however, fit to the previously known information. The Russian media almost did not report on the new revelations until Friday.
But a war correspondent writes on the website of the Kremlin-close mass newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda": He could say nothing about the authenticity of the recordings, but "no second of the published sheds light on the launch of MH17".
