article_snippet: Afterwards, Ukraine and Russia blamed each other, and still do, and the incident fuelled an increasingly bloody civil war which has seen large parts of Eastern Ukraine taken over by military forces loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
article_snippet: Amid fears for his safety his was relocated to a safe house and has been under the protection of Ukraine’s secret service ever since.
article_snippet: ‘ identities or even been executed by Russian secret service in order to hide everything’, according to Robert Bas, a journalist with Dutch state broadcaster NOS, citing anonymous sources in the investigation.
article_snippet: The combined weight of evidence undermines claims from Russia that the plane was downed by a Ukrainian warplane.
article_snippet: In the past there have been claims from Moscow that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian air force Sukhoi Su-25.
article_snippet: But Vladimir Babak – the Su-25’s chief designer – disputed this in an intervention that was acutely embarrassing to Moscow.
article_snippet: Su-25 could attack a Boeing at a height of three or four thousand metres, but Su-25 cannot shoot down a plane flying at an altitude of 10,500 metres,’ said Babak, president of the company which designs Sukhoi attack aircraft.
article_snippet: The Kiev-born aviation expert insisted:
article_snippet: I believe that all allegations of the Su-25 involvement in the tragedy are an attempt to cover tracks.