THE CASE OF IGOR TARAKANOV WHO SHOT DOWN MH17 BEFORE SHOOTING HIMSELF IN THE FOOT


By Liane Theuerkauf, Munich
@bears_with
Igor Tarakanov is a Russian soldier.
He first appeared publicly two weeks ago, on November 17, to say he had escorted a battery of Russian Army BUK missiles from Russia into Ukraine early in the month of July 2014; that was days before Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was downed and destroyed on July 17, 2014.
Tarakanov’s claim contradicts everything known for seven years and made public by the US National Intelligence Council, State Department and White House; the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD); the Russian Defence Ministry; the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) headed by Dutch police; Dutch prosecutors at the murder trial which opened in Schiphol in March 2020; the presiding judge at the trial Hendrik Steenhuis, and his secret investigating judges; the Dutch lawyers defending the Russian Army officer in the dock; and the agency in charge of all evidence in the prosecution’s case file, the Ukrainian Security Service SBU.
Tarakanov is an unusual name Russians aren’t keen to have. It means cockroach. As insects go, these are very ancient – about 350 million years – very hardy, very numerous. There is no evidence that soldier Igor Tarakanov exists – except for a publication in English by the Bellingcat group two weeks ago, and in Russian at the same time by a related publication, The Insider.