[1630]米国の「ハフィントン・ポスト」（リベラル系）のトップページには、「NO SMOKING GUN」とデカデカと見出し
米国の「ハフィントン・ポスト」（リベラル系）のトップページには、「NO SMOKING GUN」とデカデカと見出しが掲げられています。
米国は「ロシア側が関与している証拠がある」と数日前は明言していましたが、どうもロシア軍の記者会見の内容に反論できないことを気づいたようです。
そのハフィントン・ポストの記事はAP通信の記事の転載です。
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U.S. Officials: No Evidence Of Direct Russian Link To Malaysia Plane Crash
AP | By KEN DILANIAN Posted: 07/22/2014 5:08 pm EDT | Updated: 07/22/2014 7:59 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) － Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible for “creating the conditions” that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement.
The intelligence officials were cautious in their assessment, noting that while the Russians have been arming separatists in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia.
The officials briefed reporters Tuesday under ground rules that their names not be used in discussing intelligence related to last week’s air disaster, which killed 298 people.
The plane was likely shot down by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the intelligence officials said, citing intercepts, satellite photos and social media postings by separatists, some of which have been authenticated by U.S. experts.
But the officials said they did not know who fired the missile or whether any Russian operatives were present at the missile launch. They were not certain that the missile crew was trained in Russia, although they described a stepped-up campaign in recent weeks by Russia to arm and train the rebels, which they say has continued even after the downing of the commercial jetliner.
In terms of who fired the missile, “we don’t know a name, we don’t know a rank and we’re not even 100 percent sure of a nationality,” one official said, adding at another point, “There is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here.”
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the U.S. was still working to determine whether the missile launch had a “direct link” to Russia, including whether there were Russians on the ground during the attack and the degree to which Russians may have trained the separatists to launch such a strike.
“We do think President Putin and the Russian government bears responsibility for the support they provided to these separatists, the arms they provided to these separatists, the training they provided as well and the general unstable environment in eastern Ukraine,” Rhodes said in an interview with CNN.
He added that heavy weaponry continues to flow into Ukraine from Russia following the downing of the plane.
The intelligence officials said the most likely explanation for the downing was that the rebels made a mistake. Separatists previously had shot down 12 Ukrainian military airplanes, the officials said.
The officials made clear they were relying in part on social media postings and videos made public in recent days by the Ukrainian government, even though they have not been able to authenticate all of it. For example, they cited a video of a missile launcher said to have been crossing the Russian border after the launch, appearing to be missing a missile.
But later, under questioning, the officials acknowledged they had not yet verified that the video was exactly what it purported to be.
Despite the fuzziness of some details, however, the intelligence officials said the case that the separatists were responsible for shooting down the plane was solid. Other scenarios － such as that the Ukrainian military shot down the plane － are implausible, they said. No Ukrainian surface-to-air missile system was in range.
From satellites, sensors and other intelligence gathering, officials said, they know where the missile originated － in separatist-held territory － and what its flight path was. But if they possess satellite or other imagery of the missile being fired, they did not release it Tuesday. A graphic they made public depicts their estimation of the missile’s flight path with a green line. The jet’s flight path was available from air traffic control data.
In the weeks before the plane was shot down, Russia had stepped up its arming and training of the separatists after the Ukrainian government won a string of battlefield victories. The working theory is that the SA-11 missile came from Russia, although the U.S. doesn’t have proof of that, the officials said.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Powers said last week that “because of the technical complexity of the SA-11, it is unlikely that the separatists could effectively operate the system without assistance from knowledgeable personnel. Thus, we cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel in operating the systems,” she said.
Asked about evidence, one of the senior U.S. intelligence officials said it was conceivable that Russian paramilitary troops are operating in eastern Ukraine, but that there was no direct link from them to the missile launch.
Asked why civilian airline companies were not warned about a possible threat, the officials said they did not know the rebels possessed SA-11 missiles until after the Malaysian airliner was shot down.
ロシア軍は２１日に欧米側が投げつけた批判に対して、独自の情報網のからの調査結果として次のように反論しています。
FTの記事です。
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Last updated: July 21, 2014 10:56 pm
Russia challenges US accusations on MH17
By Kathrin Hille in MoscowAuthor alerts
Russia staged a dramatic challenge to increasingly confident western accusations that separatist rebels it supports in eastern Ukraine shot down a Malaysian Airlines’ plane as the Kremlin sought to avoid blame for the deaths of almost 300 innocent civilians.
The defence ministry in Moscow said Russian aviation monitoring services registered a Ukrainian military aircraft sweeping up towards Flight MH17 immediately before the Boeing disappeared from the radar. It also said that two Buk-M1 anti-aircraft batteries belonging to the Ukrainian military had been moved closer to the crash site by the morning of July 17th but had disappeared 24 hours later.
Moscow delivered its version of events just a day before EU foreign ministers are to decide whether to impose additional sanctions on Russia for its failure to allow investigators unfettered access to the crash site and its refusal in recent weeks to de-escalate the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The mounting evidence implicating Russia in the disaster put forward by the US and Ukraine in recent days has galvanised European opinion against Moscow. Some analysts have warned that, depending on how the investigation plays out, Russian president Vladimir Putin risks becoming an international pariah.
Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, said that there was mounting evidence to show that pro-Russian separatists were responsible for the crash. “Russian claims to the contrary are getting both more desperate and much harder to believe,” he said.
The Russian defence ministry said it would pass its material on to the Malaysian government on Monday and would also share any future information on the crash. At the same time, it called on the US to make available the evidence for its claim that MH17 was shot down by the rebels.
Lt Gen Andrei Kartapolov, head of the General Staff’s Main Operations Department, said Russia assumed that the US has pictures from a special satellite tasked with collecting data on rocket launches that traversed southeastern Ukraine between 5.06pm and 5.21pm Moscow time on July 17. “If the US has pictures from this satellite, it would be nice of them to share them with the international community,” Mr Kartapolov said.
The challenge is reminiscent of similar demands Moscow made after Soviet armed forces shot down Korean civilian airliners in 1978 and 1983. “Sharing such data always risks compromising your own intelligence sources and infrastructure,” said a foreign defence official in Moscow. “You don’t want to put on the table for Russia what exactly you have and what exactly you know.”
The Russian defence ministry released on Monday what it said was a video of Russian aviation radar from July 17. It featured three moving dots accounting for MH17 and two other civilian aircraft in Ukrainian airspace on routes between Europe and Asia at the time. A fourth dot appeared when MH17 was about 51 kilometres from the Russian border, and almost overlapped with MH17.
Lt Gen Igor Makushev, chief of the Air Force’s Main Staff, said the Russian military could not identify this aircraft but assumed it was an Su-25 fighter aircraft that had quickly climbed to a height of 10,000 metres and approached the Malaysian Boeing.
“Ukrainian officials have claimed that there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in the area of the crash that day,” he said. “That is obviously not true.”
He added that, according to the radar data, the Boeing abruptly lost speed exactly at the time the unidentified aircraft approached it.
Lt Gen Kartapolov also showed satellite pictures of what he identified as two Ukrainian Buk-M1 air defence batteries in Zaroshchenskoe, about 25 kilometres southwest of the Grabovo crash site, on Thursday morning － only hours before the Boeing was downed. On another picture allegedly showing the same area the next morning, the site was empty.
“The question arises: Why did they move them there, and why did they move them away the next day?” he said.
The Russian military also said MH17 deviated from the northern boundary of its approved flight corridor by 14 kilometres, and added that any crash investigation needed to look into whether this was caused by a navigation error or by commands from Ukrainian air traffic control.
Jonathan Eyal, international director of the Royal United Services Institute, a military think-tank, said Washington would now have to debate “how much intelligence can be revealed without compromising capabilities?”
Earlier this year, Nato hired commercial satellites to provide proof of Russian troop build-ups on the Ukraine border in order to get around the problem. Still, Mr Eyal said: “Either way, the Russians have made an error with this. They cannot counter all of the evidence. All that is left for them to do is throw dust in people’s faces.”
Additional reporting by Sam Jones in London
FTの記事でロシア軍のカータポロフという軍人が云うように、米国としてはロシア軍から「衛星写真をお持ちのはずですからお出しください」と言われて反論できんかったとことになるわけです。
ロシア側が出している証拠に反論できない時点で米欧とウクライナ政府側は土俵際に押し返されたのだと思われます。