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A man accused of travelling to Ukraine to recruit support for pro-Russian rebels has led a G20 rally calling for the end of democracy in Russia. About 30 Australian Cossacks, surrounded by almost as many police, marched through Brisbane's South Bank on Saturday, declaring their support for their "steel ruler", Russian President Vladimir Putin. The group's leader, Simeon Boikov, reportedly travelled to the Ukraine this year in support of pro-Russian rebels and bragged on his Facebook page about entering the war zone. Mr Boikov denied the media reports and said he was seeking defamation action. "They've blamed everybody on the...

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has accused Vladmir Putin of a "regrettable pattern" of military aggression which has culminated in warships off northern Australia. At a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron today, Mr Abbott linked the decline of Russia's economy with an increase in that nation's assertiveness. "It is part of a regrettable pattern, whether it's the bullying of Ukraine, whether it’s the increasing Russian military aircraft flying into the airspace of Japan, European countries, or whether it’s the naval task group which is now in the South Pacific, Russia is being much more assertive now than...

It is the opinion of the Bellingcat MH17 investigation team that there is undeniable evidence that separatists in Ukraine were in control of a Buk missile launcher on July 17th and transported it from Donetsk to Snizhne on a transporter. The Buk missile launcher was unloaded in Snizhne approximately three hours before the downing of MH17 and was later filmed minus one missile driving through separatist-controlled Luhansk. The Bellingcat MH17 investigation team also believes the same Buk was part of a convoy travelling from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk to near the Ukrainian border as part of a...

Before there is any further discussion of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, it’s important that one point be made absolutely clear: This plane crash is a result of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, an operation deliberately designed to create legal, political and military chaos. Without this chaos, a surface-to-air missile would not have been fired at a passenger plane. From the beginning, the Russian government did not send regular soldiers to Ukraine. Instead, it sent Russian mercenaries and security service operatives such as Igor Strelkov — the commander in chief in Donetsk and a Russian secret police colonel who fought...

After the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane crashed on July 17 in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast with 298 people on board, Kremlin-backed enthusiastically claimed credit, saying they thought they had shot down another Ukrainian military transport plane. “We did warn you - do not fly in our sky,” Kremlin-backed separatist leader Igor Girkin, a Russian intelligence service officer, wrote on his official Vkontakte soon after the tragedy. Though when the gravity of the mistake became obvious, the Russian-backed insurgents backpedaled and claimed innocence. The statements of Girkin posted on his Vkontakte page on July 18 appeared to be a lot more confusing....

“Skirt-fronting” could well become the new buzz word in international diplomacy The possibility of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott shirt-fronting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Brisbane next month over the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in Ukrainian sovereign territory with the loss of all on board - including 38 Australians - has receded following Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s 25 minute meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the Asian Europe Summit held in Milan this week. Abbott had vowed: “I’m going to shirtfront Mr Putin. I am going to be saying to Mr...

A review by Germany's foreign intelligence agency has found that MH17 was brought down by a missile fired by separatists. Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the plane's downing. A detailed analysis conducted by Germany's federal intelligence service (BND) concluded that separatists near Donetsk were responsible for bringing down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the news magazine Spiegel reported on Sunday. The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 while on route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers on board were killed, most of them Dutch nationals. BND President Gerhard Schindler presented the...

One of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash was found wearing an oxygen mask, raising the possibility that some passengers may have been conscious as the aircraft went down in eastern Ukraine. Nearly 300 people died when the passenger jet crashed in July while flying over insurgent-held territory in eastern Ukraine. "You know that somebody was discovered wearing an oxygen mask and had time to put it on," Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans said on a late night Dutch chat show. The foreign minister suggested the passengers may have been conscious as the plane went down. The...

A German company is offering a $30 million bounty for the identities of the individuals responsible for downing Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine this summer. Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine are suspected of firing surface-to-air missiles at the civilian aircraft, which crashed July 17 while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people on board. A preliminary report carried out by Dutch investigators said that the crash was the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that struck the Boeing plane from the outside. Wifka, an independent German fraud investigation company, said...

BRUSSELS — Eight weeks after a Malaysia Airlines plane disintegrated over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard and triggering a frenzy of East-West finger-pointing, investigators, in their first account of the calamity on Tuesday, released evidence consistent with an attack by a surface-to-air missile but shed no clear light on who was responsible. A preliminary report issued in The Hague by the Dutch Safety Board, which is leading an international effort to get to the bottom of the tragedy, gave some indirect support to assertions by the United States and Ukraine that pro-Russian rebels shot down the aircraft with...

<p>Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was destroyed in an instant when the cockpit and other parts of the fuselage were peppered by "a large number of high-energy objects," causing the plane to break apart over eastern Ukraine before anyone could raise an alarm, according to a preliminary report on the disaster which was released on Tuesday.</p>

Russians were operating a BUK missile launcher seen in the area where the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet MH17 was shot down, eyewitnesses have told Panorama. Distinctive shrapnel damage to the plane points to a fragmentation weapon - such as a BUK - downing the plane. The Kremlin had previously suggested that the missile was from a Ukrainian fighter jet. Pro-Russian rebels have denied any possession of a BUK. However, photographs and videos cast doubt on the claim by the Kremlin and pro-Russian rebels - that they did not have a BUK missile launcher on their territory. Three eyewitnesses, all civilians,...

As Russian troops and armored columns advance in Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government begs for aid from the free world it hoped would receive it and protect it as one of its own. The leaders of the free world, meanwhile, are struggling to find the right terminology to free themselves from the moral responsibility to provide that protection. Putin’s bloody invasion of a sovereign European nation is an incursion, much like Crimea — remember Crimea? — was an “uncontested arrival” instead of Anschluss. A civilian airliner was blown out of the sky just six weeks ago –—remember MH17? — and...

Russia builds all of the rocket engines that deliver U.S. military satellites into space. Gen. William Shelton, U.S. Space Command, said Tuesday the recent missile attack on Malaysian passenger jet that killed 298 people will not result any change to this (crony driven, United Launch Alliance) RD-180 engine arrangement. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SpaceX, has sued the Air Force for the oppertunity to compete, for contracts that provide lift to military and intel satellite. Right now, only ULA is allowed to "compete" for the $9 billion Engine project. //Snip// Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dimitry Rogozin threatened in May to cut...

<p>Nearly one month has passed since Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over the skies of eastern Ukraine, taking the lives of 298 people.</p> <p>An international investigation is now underway, led by the Netherlands, with members from Ukraine, Malaysia, the United States, Russia and others.</p>

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the US knows ‘more than it is telling’ about the Malaysian aircraft that crashed in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 298 people on board and seriously damaging US-Russian relations in the process. In an effort to inject some balance of opinion, not to mention pure sanity, into the ongoing debate over what happened to Malaysian Flight MH17, Ron Paul is convinced the US government is withholding information on the catastrophe. "The US government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a...

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) accused the U.S. government of “hiding” the truth behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which crashed in eastern Ukraine last month. “The U.S. government has grown strangely quiet on the accusation that it was Russia or her allies that brought down the Malaysian airliner with a Buk anti-aircraft missile,” Paul said on his news website Thursday. […] “It’s hard to believe that the U.S., with all of its spy satellites available for monitoring everything in Ukraine, that precise proof of who did what and when is not available,” the former lawmaker and GOP...

Ukraine has claimed that pro-Moscow separatists downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 after mistaking it for a Russian Aeroflot plane that they supposedly wanted to shoot down to provide Moscow with a pretext for invading Ukraine. [....] Ukrainian Security Service head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said Thursday that separatists had intended to hit an Aeroflot airliner that was headed from Moscow to Larnaca, Cyprus, and whose flight path passed close to that of the Malaysian jet. Separatists were "ordered" to position a Buk anti-aircraft missile near the village of Pervomaisk in eastern Ukraine, but because the fighters were Russian, not local, they confused...

Russia’s original plan was to down the Aeroflot plane, not the MH17, to create a pretext for the invasion of Ukraine, SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvajchenko said, speaking in Shuster Live TV program late Aug. 8.

UKRAINE has denied that its State Security Service (SBU) had seized the air-to-ground transmission tapes between its air traffic controllers and Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on the day the jetliner was shot down. Its ambassador to Malaysia Ihor Humennyi, in an exclusive interview with the New Straits Times, said that reports alleging that the SBU had seized the recordings had not been independently verified or confirmed by Kiev. “There is no proof or any evidence that the tapes were confiscated by the SBU. “I only read this in the newspapers.” Almost immediately after the shootdown, several news agencies, including the...