Leonid Kharchenko, a member of the illegal Russian-led military formations in Donbas and one of four key persons accused in the MH17 case, was detained in Russian-occupied Donetsk, according to BBC Russian.
The arrest took place on March 11, just two days after a court trial was launched in the Netherlands officially indicting Kharchenko, a Ukrainian national, on being involved in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet in the sky over Donbas in July 2014, which killed all 298 persons on board.
As the BBC’s sources among militants said, Kharchenko was arrested by militants on charges of being involved in an unreasonable search in 2014 and of illegal possession of firearms.
According to the report, he is still held in a jail in Donetsk.
BBC’s sources familiar with the circumstances believe that Kharchenko was isolated in order to prevent him from being spirited away by Ukrainian intelligence, in a fashion similar to an operation during which Volodymyr Tsemakh, another important MH-17 case participant, was abducted and transferred to Ukrainian territory for interrogation.
On May 8, the occupational authorities in Donetsk extended Kharchenko’s arrest by two more months, according to the BBC.
Kharchenko, 47, joined the Russian-backed militants during the early battle of Slovyansk in April 2014. Before the war, he reportedly worked as an engineer in the city of Kostyantynivka north of Donetsk.
Going under the code name Krot (“mole”), he served as a special operations operative with so-called “Main Directorate of Intelligence” (GRU) of Russian-backed militants in Donetsk Oblast.
He is wanted by Ukraine on charges of terrorism since 2015.
According to the official inquiry by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on the MH-17 case, Kharchenko was directly involved in the transportation of the Buk-M1 missile system between Russia and the Ukrainian territory controlled by militants.
In particular, intercepted phone conversations among Russian-backed militants published as part of the JIT investigation, record a militant going by codename Krot coordinating the deployment of the air defense complex. JIT also believes Kharchenko could be directly involved in the downing of the passenger jet and the missile system’s evacuation to Russia, as BBC notes.
Independent inquiries by investigation team Bellingcat also confirmed many of JIT’s deductions and identified the Buk system as the one belonging to Russia’s 53rd Air Defense Brigade based in Kursk Oblast.
Wilbert Paulissen of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) addresses at the press conference of the JIT on the ongoing investigation of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in 2014, in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands, June 19, 2019. (AFP)
Apart from Kharchenko, the court also indicts three other Russian nationals, former operatives of Russian military and intelligence agencies: Sergey Dubinksiy, Kharchenko’s immediate commanding officer, as well as another militant Oleg Pulatov, and Igor Girkin, who was a “defense minister” of Russia’s puppet quasi-state of “Donetsk People’s Republic” in 2014.
Despite massive overwhelming evidence revealed over the years since the MH17 crash, Russia continues to vehemently deny its direct involvement in the tragedy.
