Blamed Ukrainian Forces For The Loss Of The Airliner

A British "citizen journalist" says he has found evidence that Russia digitally altered satellite images to place blame for the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 last year on Ukraine.

The journalist is Eliot Higgins, the founder of the website Bellingcat. He said he used publicly available satellite images from Google Earth Pro as the basis for his research. He found that images of the site where Russia says the Ukrainian missile launcher that reportedly brought down the jet was located were digitally altered using Photoshop CS5.

A post dated May 31 on the Bellingcat site said that the images used by the Russian Ministry of Defense that it said shows Buk missile launchers used to bring down the airliner were captured in June 2014. It also says that the photos are incorrectly dated, and the "error level analysis of the images also reveal the images have been edited. This includes a Buk missile launcher that was removed to make it appear that Buk missile launcher was active on July 17th, and imagery where Buk missile launchers were added to make it appear they were within attack range of Flight MH17."

Higgins says that his research refutes all four claims made by the Russian Defense Ministry in a news conference shortly after the plane went down.

FMI: www.bellingcat.com