In Donetsk, one of the accused in the case of a plane crash over Donbass was arrested - ForumDaily
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In Donetsk, one of the accused in the case of a plane crash over Donbass was arrested

Russian service BBC It became known that in March Leonid Kharchenko, a key defendant in the case of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing MH17, shot down in the skies of Donbass in 2014, was arrested in Donetsk. He is one of four defendants in a case currently before a court in the Netherlands.

Photo: Shutterstock

In 2014, Kharchenko (call sign "Mole") was the commander of one of the GRU reconnaissance units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). In the Netherlands, Kharchenko was formally charged with involvement in the crash of the Boeing, the trial began on March 9 this year.

And on March 11, Kharchenko was detained near his house in Donetsk by the DPR authorities and arrested, but in a completely different criminal case. This information was confirmed to the Russian BBC service by a source related to the military command of the DPR in 2014-2015, as well as colleague Kharchenko, who still lives in Donetsk.

On May 8, the arrest of the former DPR military intelligence officer was extended for another two months. Now, according to interlocutors of the BBC, he is being held in a pre-trial detention center of the DPR Ministry of Justice, which is located in Donetsk on Kobozeva Street 4.

Harchenko’s colleagues, who agreed to speak with the BBC, believe that they want to isolate the former intelligence officer.

“The charges are ridiculous: allegedly participating in an illegal search in 2014 and illegal possession of weapons,” said an interlocutor familiar with the case of the arrested Kharchenko. — On the first point, the victims have no claims against him. According to the second, this pistol was given to him in 2019 by the Ministry of State Security to ensure personal safety in connection with the MH17 case.”

All this is intended to isolate Kharchenko, the source said.

A colleague of Kharchenko, who agreed to talk with the BBC, believes that the former military intelligence officer was taken into custody in order to exclude the possibility of his abduction by the Ukrainian secret services.

Last summer, Ukrainian special forces managed to take to Kyiv former DPR missileman Vladimir Tsemakh, who is also considered an important participant in the story of the Boeing MH17 crash.

On the subject: In The Hague, the trial in the case of the crash of MH17 over the Donbass began: what next

In September 2019, Zemakh was sent to Moscow as part of an exchange of withheld citizens between Ukraine and Russia. Now he lives in the territory controlled by the DPR.

“Kharchenko lived peacefully in Donetsk until recently and did not suspect that this could happen to him,” a former colleague of Kharchenko told the BBC. “Perhaps he is being guarded in such a cruel way, but this is a very strange method of protecting a person.”

The BBC has sent a request to the Ministry of State Security of the self-proclaimed DPR and is awaiting a response.

Ukrainian authorities put Kharchenko on the wanted list in July 2015. He was charged in absentia with creating a terrorist group; in 2019, a criminal case was opened against Kharchenko on suspicion of involvement in the crash of Boeing MH17.

Who is Leonid Kharchenko?

Leonid Kharchenko is 47 years old, he was born and raised in the Donetsk region, Ukraine. It is known that he has a technical education. Before the outbreak of hostilities in eastern Ukraine, Kharchenko worked as an engineer in the city of Konstantinovka. There is no evidence of Kharchenko’s belonging to the military structures of Russia or Ukraine.

Kharchenko himself told reporters in 2015 that before the start of the conflict in Donbass he had no military experience. Kharchenko joined the DPR supporters in April 2014, during the battle for Slavyansk.

Presumably, in the summer of 2014, Kharchenko became an officer in the special forces of the military intelligence of the DPR, took the call sign “Mole” and began working under the command of Sergei Dubinsky, a retired officer of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Russia.

According to Kharchenko, he took part in most key battles in eastern Ukraine in 2014-2015.

Photo: video frame YouTube / TSN

“We liberate the cities, we are the first to enter. Cleansing, capture,” Kharchenko described his work in an interview with Donetsk journalists from Icorpus. “We are engaged in destroying checkpoints, and combat units are already coming after us.”

It was reported that in the spring of 2015, Kharchenko was to be awarded the highest award of the DPR - the Hero Star.

His last public appearance was in April 2015 - then, introducing himself as the commander of the second department of the GRU DPR, he gave an interview to journalists. There was no data for a long time about what happened to Krot after 2015.

In groups of supporters of the DPR in social networks, a version was expressed that he was killed. As the BBC interlocutors explained, in fact, at the end of 2015, Kharchenko left the territory of the DPR, moved to Russia and settled in Rostov-on-Don.

A year later, he returned to the ranks of the Armed Forces of the DPR. In 2018, Kharchenko resigned as a lieutenant colonel and stayed in Donetsk.

Kharchenko and MN17 case

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), leading the official international investigation into the crash of MH17, believes that Kharchenko participated in the movement of the Buk anti-aircraft missile system throughout the DPR, from which the Boeing was shot down.

In the recordings of telephone conversations of DPR supporters published by the Security Service of Ukraine, it appears that on July 17, 2014, a person with the call sign “Mole” tells another fighter the way to the location of the Buk.

According to the Dutch prosecutor's office, Kharchenko could also coordinate the movement of the Buk to the immediate missile launch site and the subsequent evacuation of the complex to Russia.

In February 2020, the Netherlands Prosecutor's Office formally charged with involvement in the crash of flight МН17 Kharchenko and three others: his immediate head for the GRU DNR Sergey Dubinsky, another officer of the GRU DNR Oleg Pulatov, as well as the former Minister of Defense of the DNR Igor Girkin (Strelkov).

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According to the investigation, all of them were, to varying degrees, responsible for transporting the Buk through the territory of Donbass and provided the air defense missile system crew with data on the point from which missiles could be launched at air targets.

Kharchenko is the only one of the accused who is a citizen of Ukraine. Girkin, Dubinsky and Pulatov are Russian citizens who previously served in the special forces of the FSB, GRU and Airborne Forces.

All accused are on the international wanted list. Girkin and Dubinsky denied the accusations, Pulatov said that he was ready to interact with the court only through lawyers, Kharchenko did not give comments on this topic.

Continuation of the investigation

The trial in the MH17 crash case began in March. None of the accused appeared in the courtroom and made contact with the investigation. The process should resume in June 2020.

The trial is being conducted under Dutch law, since most of the 298 people on board the plane were citizens of this country. An international investigative team concluded that the Boeing was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from a Buk anti-aircraft missile system near the village of Snezhnoye.

The investigative team is confident that the Buk was delivered to eastern Ukraine from Russia.

Moscow denies any involvement in the crash of MH17, putting forward versions of the fault of the Ukrainian military. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the rocket was fired by plane from a settlement controlled by Ukrainian troops.

At the end of April, the BBC Russian Service published an investigation in which it named the possible name of another important person involved in the Boeing crash case. In JIT materials, this person went by the pseudonym “Vladimir Ivanovich.”

People who personally spoke with this person told the BBC that Colonel General Andrei Burlaka, acting first deputy head of the border service of the FSB of Russia, may be hiding behind this name.

Crash Flight MH17

The Boeing 777, operating flight MH17 Amsterdam - Kuala - Lumpur, was shot down over Donbass on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board were killed, including 80 children. According to the International Investigation Team (JIT), the plane was shot down from a Buk missile launcher belonging to the Kursk 53rd Air Defense Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces. JIT believes that the Buk entered separatist-controlled territory from Millerovo and returned to Russia through the border near Matveev Kurgan.

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