In a State Department briefing on Monday, Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf said there was a “preponderance of evidence” pointing to the fact that militia in eastern Ukraine downed flight MH17. Harf said the US government’s suspicions were based on information gathered from social media sites. While US President Barack Obama voiced concerns that the work of experts at the crash site is being hindered.
RT: The US President has said work at the crash site is being obstructed. But today the OSCE mission reported experts have full access to the site. Why the contradiction do you think?
Eric Draitser: The dissention here is in the fact that the US is trying to capitalize on this tragedy for political purposes. If you noticed in the experts from the US Ambassador to the UN, in her remarks she noted that the US had demanded that the anti-government separatists in eastern Ukraine lay down their arms and leave the region so that the investigation could take place. In other words using the investigation as a conduit to achieve what the government in Kiev and its military forces simply could not, and that is tactical military victory and retaking of the territory. There is a very cynical undercurrent in what the US is doing in all of this, and of course that is reflected in a lot of their rhetoric and the double standards and hypocrisy abounded in this case. As Russia presented its case with some of the hard evidence including the images, including the data, asking the US to provide its counter-claims and its evidence, its data. And when you look at the US’ response from the spokespeople it is that they will not provide this evidence because according to their words “there is no equivalence between Russian intelligence and US intelligence” whatever that is supposed to mean. In other words the US is obscuring and distorting the issue in order to achieve political victory.
RT: Russia’s Defense Ministry has just presented its findings on the plane crash, including satellite images and radio-location data. Do you think the international media will pick up on it?
ED: Undoubtedly they will. The story is circulating throughout social media; the story is being picked up internationally. The question is to what extent the forces in Europe within the European establishment and media will continue to tow the US propaganda line. As we’ve seen in regard with unilateral sanctions that the US is trying to impose on Russia, Europeans are not necessarily in step with Washington. We have dissention in France, in Germany; the business establishment is looking at the US as if it is trying to escalate the conflict needlessly. So when we look at the Malaysia aircraft disaster, of course it’s a tragedy, but we should be asking ourselves how this will impact the overall equation in eastern Ukraine and Eastern Europe more generally and whether it will be used as a pretext for the US to legitimize continued NATO expansion.