We bring our unusual present to the crash site. We want to return it to someone, maybe to the rescue workers or to other people in charge. No one is especially interested in what we have brought. I immediately understand why. A few pieces of luggage are the least of the problems. Piles of suitcases are strewn all over, for a dozen kilometers. So are plane fragments and partly charred bodies, or what was left of them, often without limbs. You have to be careful where you place your foot because you can step on a corpse.
A cameraman from one of the TV stations took a step backward. He felt something soft. He was turned toward me. Suddenly a terrible grimace appeared on his face. Slowly, he turned his head to look at his foot, fearing the worst. It turned out to be only mud. He glanced at me again, this time with great relief.
On one of the fields where much of the luggage could be found nothing has been done with the bodies. They are still there, uncovered. Rescue workers, firefighters, and medics walk around aimlessly. Then they start fixing a damaged power line. Only after a few hours do they gather a group of coal miners who most likely will look for bodies. Others place white flags to label corpses and remains. No one knows what is going on. The rescue workers don’t want to answer any questions. They tell us to call a press spokesperson, but he doesn’t want to talk to us, either.
Other than flags and some tape nothing secures the area. In principle, anyone can get to the crash site. The remains of plane, passengers, and belongings are not protected in any way. Dozens of residents from local towns and villages stand on the road, next to the plane wreck. Many of them cry or have tears in their eyes.
The remains of the fuselage can be found a few hundred meters further on. In the Russian media footage that was shown yesterday you could see some bodies. Today they are gone. Only the wreck has remained. What happened to them? According to the most popular theory they have been taken by militants. The cadavers had shrapnel in them so it would be possible to conjecture that the fuselage was hit by a missile.
Pavel Gubarev, one of the separatist representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, has come to the site. He is with his bodyguards, but probably his only purpose here is to appear in the media.
To most of the journalists’ questions he responds: “I can’t comment on this.”
He maintains, however, that the plane was not shot down by separatists but by Ukrainians from the Dnipropetrovsk region. This is almost 190 kilometers from the crash site. Gubarev wants to find out more and pass the information to the reporters. So he calls the “prime minister” of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian PR man, Alexander Borodai. Borodai doesn’t pick up.
“I’ll try again,” says Gubarev, a little unnerved.
Nothing happens. Borodai’s cell is silent. Gubarev has not tried again. This just confirms how insignificant he is in the Donetsk People’s Republic, and that for a long time the reins have been held by someone else.
In the background you can hear explosions. It is artillery. According to separatist sources, insurgents in the Luhansk region have begun a counterattack, and they are trying to crush the Ukrainian forces. “They have been shooting since this morning. Fighting must be very heavy,” says Oxana who lives near the crash site.
The bodies that were scattered in the fields were picked up after three days. The corpses were to be examined by experts from Donetsk. Who are those experts? Do they know what they are doing? No one knows.
According to the Ukrainians, the separatists are taking the bodies to Russia. At least some of them, those that might prove that the airplane was shot down. The bodies found near the fuselage disappeared on the first night. Initially, nobody knew what happened to the black boxes, either. The separatist “authorities” were not sure whether they had them. One day they said “yes,” next day they said “no.” Only on the fourth day after the crash were the black boxes handed over to a delegation from Malaysian Airlines.
During the day the crash site is guarded by a group of separatists. Their commander is called “Grim.” A photo of him with a toy monkey went around the world. He has a badge in the colors of the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic that says on it “General Prosecutor’s Office.” Yet he doesn’t want to give his full name. He fired in the air, twice. First, when the OSCE mission tried to reach the crash site. Next day, in the same fashion, he decided to convince the journalists to move away. It was very effective.
When the OSCE mission tried to get to the site for the second time, they were accompanied by several other vehicles. In them there were about thirty armed men with badges of the delegalized police unit Berkut, and several dozen separatists from Slovyansk. They were from the closest entourage of Igor Girkin, the “military commander” of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Among them I noticed a former spokesperson of the “greens.” And a “local reporter,” as he called himself in April. Now he was in uniform and he had a rifle in his hand. As I was told by one of the Russian journalists, this person introduced himself as Girkin’s former spokesperson. It was Girkin who exercised full control over the separatist-held areas in the Donetsk region. It looked as though he had the final say about anything connected to the crash.
Almost immediately the separatists started to blame the Ukrainians for downing the Boeing. They instantly presented varied theories about why it was the Ukrainians’ fault. First, it was Gubarev’s hypothesis that the jetliner was shot down while still in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Others speculated that it was downed by a Ukrainian SU-27 fighter. Later, they surmised that Ukrainians wanted to hit a plane with Putin aboard but they mixed up the airplanes.
Of course, all the “Donetsk Republic” leaders maintain that they are not equipped with BUK missiles. They don’t accept the fact that previously they wrote and said something different.
Girkin’s version of events was the most startling. In an interview published on the separatist website Russian Spring he claimed that “most of the corpses weren’t fresh” and that the bodies were “drained of blood.” Therefore, he suggested, it was a medical plane.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, moreover, casually stated that if the jetliner crashed on Ukrainian territory it is the Ukrainians’ fault, regardless of who was shooting at the plane.
The interview Alexander Khodakovsky, the commander of the Ukrainian-Russian battalion Vostok, gave to Reuters was just a formality. He confirmed that the separatists were equipped with the BUK missile system. The quantity of evidence was large enough to state this conclusively. Khodakovsky admits that the system was not seized from the Ukrainian army, but that it arrived from the Luhansk region under the separatists’ banners. It is probable that it came from Russia. According to him, after the plane went down, the BUK disappeared from that location in order not to leave any evidence. Despite this, Khodakovsky blames Ukraine for this tragedy because it provoked this whole situation. Its planes were presumed to be flying over these areas. After the interview was published, the Vostok commander tried to explain that he hadn’t said anything of the kind. By that very fact he was caught red-handed. Reuters released the recorded interview in which his very words could be heard.
As I mentioned before, the bodies were collected only on the third day after the airplane was downed. You could smell their odor. It is not clear why this took so long. On the one hand, it might have been because of the investigation, but on the other, how can you explain that the bodies near the cockpit fragments were gone the next day? In addition, someone was going through the passengers’ luggage. On the third day a broken computer and two bottles of Duty Free alcohol were placed on the pile of suitcases. Supposedly, this was to confirm that nothing had been robbed. However, if you consider that only a small portion of the crash site seemed to be protected, this was very unlikely.