February 15, 2017 Bellingcat
This article was collaboratively researched and written by the Bellingcat MH17 Investigation Team.
On 18
July 2014, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) published several tapped telephone
conversations in relation to the July 17
downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Most of these conversations,
recorded on the day of the downing, are between an officer identified as
‘Khmuryi’ (’Gloomy’ or ‘Grumpy’) and other separatist officers or soldiers of
the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. The SBU identified
‘Khmuryi’ as ‘Sergey Nikolaevich Petrovsky’, a Russian GRU officer, but it
took some time before this was covered in-depth by either Western or Russian-language
media.
On 1
April 2015, the Dutch news organizations NRC, NOS and De Telegraaf wrote on Khmuryi after the Joint Investigation Team
(JIT) published a video that included the tapped phone conversations, but
audible censoring of the identities of the parties in the call. However, on 18
September 2014, Russian-language media site PolitRussia published an article and a video about ‘Khmuryi’, a DNR officer named Sergey Petrovsky,
presenting a photograph and a video interview. This publication is based on a video from 27 June 2014 showing an interview with a
member of the so-called Donbas People’s Militia with the call sign
‘Khmuryi’. However, that video does not provide the full name of the commander.
As this article will show, the man interviewed who reportedly fought in
Slavyansk and is from Moscow is almost certainly not the same “Khmuryi” from
the intercepted telephone conversation. Another video, titled ‘Sergey Nikolaevich
Petrovsky (call sign Khmuryi, Bad soldier)’ and uploaded 2 October 2014, shows
a video message of a masked man, who according to the video title is Sergey
Petrovsky. However, the video was previously uploaded on 12 June 2014, entitled ‘Spetsnaz of
Strelkov,’ and this man seems to be a different person than the bearded man in
the 27 June 2014 video, as his voice differs.
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