An condominium constructing in Izium, Ukraine, that was broken by Russian forces. Ukraine recaptured Izium in September 2022.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
An condominium constructing in Izium, Ukraine, that was broken by Russian forces. Ukraine recaptured Izium in September 2022.
Claire Harbage/NPR
KHARKIV, Ukraine — On the outdated sweet firm warehouse on Partisan Avenue in Izium, Ukraine, indicators of the Russian occupation had been all over the place. An artillery spherical sat close to one of many partitions. Throughout, the stays of homes lay in rubble, with caved-in partitions and no roofs.
Native resident Oleksiy Zadniprovskiy greeted us there, together with a chained-up guard canine. After the Russian troops left, he and his group of humanitarian employees moved in to assist the just lately liberated space get well.
Zadniprovskiy launched us to Ruslan, a volunteer who declined to present his final identify as a result of he feared hazard if the Russians return. Even now, the constructing is lower than 100 kilometers from Bakhmut, the flashpoint for ongoing combating in japanese Ukraine.
Ruslan informed us what we would come there to be taught: that he heard and noticed anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the neighborhood of the advanced whereas the world was underneath Russian occupation.
The outdated warehouse, adorned with banners of Western beers like Budweiser and Corona Additional, had been the short-term headquarters of a Russian anti-aircraft unit. Prosecutors within the Kharkiv area of Ukraine confirmed that. They confirmed us a doc confiscated after the Russian retreat that named the unit’s commander, together with his cellphone quantity and name signal — “Вoлда́й,” — together with the handle for his or her headquarters.
The sources and documentation additionally confirmed it wasn’t simply any anti-aircraft unit.
It was the 53rd Anti-Plane Missile Brigade, among the many most infamous — and needed — items within the Russian navy.
The 53rd is greatest identified for its position in capturing down Malaysia Airways Flight MH17 in 2014 because it flew over Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew died.
Individuals stroll amid the particles on the crash web site of the Flight MH17 passenger airplane close to the village of Grabovo, Ukraine, on July 17, 2014.
Dmitry Lovetsky/AP
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Dmitry Lovetsky/AP
Individuals stroll amid the particles on the crash web site of the Flight MH17 passenger airplane close to the village of Grabovo, Ukraine, on July 17, 2014.
Dmitry Lovetsky/AP
“You may regard the downing of Flight MH17 [as the] Dutch 9/11,” mentioned Brechtje van de Moosdijk, a spokesperson for the Joint Investigation Group exploring the civilian airline assault. “When it occurred, it was a sizzling summer season’s day, July 17, 2014. Everyone was completely satisfied and on holidays or mendacity within the backyard or on the swimming pool. After which this airplane was downed.”
And the 53rd has been a world pariah ever since, a minimum of as a lot as battle crimes investigators are involved. The truth that the unit is working in Ukraine nonetheless as we speak? It is just like the Russian president taunting the remainder of the world.
“This unit, after it shot down Malaysia Airways Flight 17… didn’t face any retribution. They didn’t face any justice for the crimes they dedicated,” mentioned George Barros, a Russia analyst on the Institute for the Examine of Battle. “And sadly, that is very a lot systematic in the best way that the Russian Federation has been in a position to violate worldwide regulation.”
On the path of the 53rd Brigade
Ukrainian navy and intelligence sources informed NPR that the 53rd Brigade was energetic over a lot of 2022 within the Kharkiv area, an space within the northeast of Ukraine close to the Russian border.
However there was little concrete proof of the unit’s particular location. The 53rd Brigade focuses on anti-aircraft missile techniques. In contrast to infantry or mechanized items, they don’t battle on the entrance strains, the place open-source pictures of captured prisoners of battle can be utilized to supply details about a unit’s actions and whereabouts.
Indicators of destruction all through Izium could be seen after its liberation.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Indicators of destruction all through Izium could be seen after its liberation.
Claire Harbage/NPR
“Militaries undertake important efforts to attempt to conceal their vital key battlefield belongings,” defined Barros. “The 53rd is actually a kind of as a result of it is designed to guard the front-line items from air assaults.”
Ukraine retook management of the Kharkiv area in September of final 12 months. Throughout that interval of combating, Ukrainian forces retrieved some paperwork Russian forces left behind at an deserted headquarters within the Kharkiv area.
One of many paperwork listed the navy items that Russian forces had within the Izium space. On the seventeenth line, there was details about the 53rd that we had been searching for.
“I can affirm that we’ve data that for a while they had been settled within the Izium district, within the Kharkiv area,” Oleksandr Philchakov, the lead prosecutor for the Kharkiv area, informed NPR. Philchakov was monitoring varied Russian items as a part of his workplace’s efforts to prosecute alleged battle crimes.
Ukrainian investigators exhume our bodies from a mass grave web site in Izium in September. Investigators had been hoping to seek out and doc potential proof of battle crimes, and likewise to have the ability to establish these buried right here and not using a identify.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Ukrainian investigators exhume our bodies from a mass grave web site in Izium in September. Investigators had been hoping to seek out and doc potential proof of battle crimes, and likewise to have the ability to establish these buried right here and not using a identify.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Barros reviewed the doc and located it seemed genuine. He additionally identified that the data matches different open-source details about the place the 53rd’s affiliated items had been.
The affirmation that the brigade had been combating in Izium might be vital to Ukrainian and Western prosecutors trying to discover justice for potential battle crimes, to not point out the households of the victims of MH17.
A infamous historical past
The connection between the 53rd Brigade and Malaysia Airways Flight 17 was first made by open-source investigators at Bellingcat.
Individually, a Joint Investigation Group made up of a number of international locations that misplaced residents because of the downing of MH17 concluded after years of labor {that a} missile system equipped by the 53rd Brigade was behind the crash.
Final month at The Hague, the Joint Investigation Group introduced some remaining findings and provided gorgeous new particulars. The investigators performed intercepted cellphone calls of Russian-backed separatists that had been combating in japanese Ukraine in 2014.
Australian officer and member of MH17 Joint Investigation Group David McLean speaks throughout a press convention on the outcomes of the continued investigation at EU Company for Prison Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) headquarters in The Hague on Feb. 8.
Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
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Australian officer and member of MH17 Joint Investigation Group David McLean speaks throughout a press convention on the outcomes of the continued investigation at EU Company for Prison Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) headquarters in The Hague on Feb. 8.
Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Utilizing these calls, investigators concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself was finally behind the switch of an anti-aircraft system — the identical system that ultimately shot down Flight MH17. It underscored that the 53rd Brigade’s deadly actions had been at Putin’s path.
Russian-backed separatists within the space after the airplane crashed did not seem to point out remorse for the incident, in accordance with Russian navy knowledgeable Tom Bullock.
“There are a number of pictures discovered on their social media accounts displaying them posing subsequent to mess from the plane, standing subsequent to the Malaysia Airways emblem and posing for pictures for his or her social media,” Bullock mentioned.
The unit’s painful legacy
Piet Ploeg misplaced his brother, his brother’s spouse and their son on the airplane. His brother’s stays had been by no means recognized.
“I all the time say our members of the family had been, in truth, the primary non-Ukrainian victims of a battle that began eight years in the past,” he mentioned. “So the whole lot [that] provides us details about the position of Russia in Ukraine is, for us, vital as a result of it helps us to type … world opinion concerning the position of Russia in Ukraine.”
Piet Ploeg, who misplaced his brother, his sister-in-law and his nephew in MH17, arrives at Schiphol airport within the Netherlands in 2020. Ploeg is the chairman of the MH17 Catastrophe Basis that was established within the aftermath of the July 17, 2014, downing of the Malaysia Airways flight.
Peter Dejong/AP
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Piet Ploeg, who misplaced his brother, his sister-in-law and his nephew in MH17, arrives at Schiphol airport within the Netherlands in 2020. Ploeg is the chairman of the MH17 Catastrophe Basis that was established within the aftermath of the July 17, 2014, downing of the Malaysia Airways flight.
Peter Dejong/AP
The affirmation of the 53rd’s latest actions can also be vital for individuals like Silene Fredriksz, whose son was killed within the downing of MH17.
“Our lives modified utterly. We had a household with 5 kids, and now they’re solely 4,” she mentioned. “And nothing, and no one, can fill within the gaps that they left. It hits you in each facet of your life. I am not the identical individual as I used to be earlier than. It is a life earlier than and a life after. And it is very exhausting. Nonetheless very exhausting.”
She’s paid particular consideration to the 53rd and continues to be haunted by the unit’s lethal selections. Details about the unit and the Russian navy’s actions assist her course of her grief.
Silene (left) and Rob Fredriksz discuss their son Bryce and his girlfriend, Daisy, who had been among the many 298 individuals killed when the the MH17 flight was shot down by a missile in 2014, at their home in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2020.
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Silene (left) and Rob Fredriksz discuss their son Bryce and his girlfriend, Daisy, who had been among the many 298 individuals killed when the the MH17 flight was shot down by a missile in 2014, at their home in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2020.
Peter Dejong/AP
“[I] watch the whole lot that has something to do with the battle now happening and the whole lot that has to do with MH17, Russia, Ukraine,” she mentioned. “I’ll by no means have closure. … However once we get to know a part of the reality, [it] provides us relaxation.”
Shortly earlier than the publication of this story, President Vladimir Putin signed a brand new decree concerning the 53rd Brigade.
Apparently unconcerned about how it will look to the skin world, he ordered that the unit be given a brand new honorary designation: the title of “Guards,” a time period reserved for supposedly elite Russian items.
