1) Rebels aim higher
The first evidence comes from earlier this week, with the downing of an An-26 Ukrainian military transport plane (pictured below) on Monday in Lugansk. Crucially, the aircraft was flying at 6,500m when it was hit. At such an altitude the plane was well beyond the range of the anti-aircraft weaponry that rebel forces were known to have at their disposal. If they had shot it down as they said, they did so with a new piece of equipment hitherto unseen in their arsenal.
Rebel leaders insist they do not possess rocket launchers capable of hitting MH17, which was flying at 10,000m, but they would have needed one to have hit the An-26.
2) The rebel armoury
The second set of evidence against the rebels comes from open-source social media. It points to the kind of anti-aircraft system that could hit a plane at 6,500 or 10,000m.
On June 29, an official account of the Donetsk rebels tweeted a picture of a Russian-made Buk missile launcher – a large, vehicle-mounted missile system with a range of more than 11,000m. The picture, which has since been deleted, was accompanied by text claiming the launcher was in the rebels’ possession.
Where it came from is not clear. In late June rebel forces over-ran a small military base near Donetsk that houses anti-aircraft unit A1402 of the Ukrainian army. It is possible that they captured the launcher in doing so. The Ukrainian ministry of defence, however, has said it has accounted for all 60 of those it operates.
Speaking to the BBC on Friday morning, the Ukrainian ambassador to Nato said he was in no doubt the Buk launcher had come from Russia.
Claiming their equipment was captured when it fact it was smuggled over the border has also long been part of the rebel playbook. “They try to cover Russian arms supply by publicly stating they have captured equipment in the days or weeks before they use it,” says Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and an expert on Russian weaponry and tactics.
3) Buk missiles in the area
The third set of evidence, again from open-source social media, purports to show a Buk system being moved around by rebel forces in the past 24 hours in the area of the attack on MH17.
The FT has reviewed numerous pictures and videos of a Buk launcher from different sources online. Their exact date and location cannot be verified, but image checking software indicates they are not historic. And in some, landmarks can be identified that indicate the location is indeed the town of Torez, close to where MH17 was blown up.
Several witness accounts of Torez locals also now claim to have seen a Buk launcher in the town. A video on YouTube shows a Buk launcher travelling along the road from Torez to Snizhne.The Buk system in question was “transported to Russia overnight . . . where it will likely be destroyed”, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, claimed on Friday in a Facebook posting citing intelligence.
Late on Friday morning another video surfaced on YouTube purportedly from eastern Ukraine. Depicted in it: a Buk, barely covered in a tarpaulin on the back of a lorry, driving away at speed towards the Russian border.
4) The rebel boast
The fourth piece of evidence was a claim made by Igor Strelkov, the rebels’ military commander, on his official page on a Russian social media site soon after Flight MH17 crashed. Mr Strelkov boasted that separatists had downed a Ukrainian An-26 military transport plane “in the area of Torez”.
“We warned them not to fly in ‘our sky’,” he said, adding there was video confirmation of the latest “bird drop”.
Around the same time, Russia’s state-controlled RIA-Novosti news agency carried a report, citing local “witnesses”, that a Ukrainian An-26 had been shot down “near the Progress coal mine” – the same location given by Mr Strelkov. Reporters from Russia’s LifeNews channel, seen as close to the Russian security establishment, rushed to the scene apparently believing a Ukrainian military plane had been shot down.
No An-26 was downed, indicating that the rebels may have mistakenly targeted MH17 and only later realised their mistake.
Indeed, Mr Strelkov’s post was hastily deleted as the reality of the situation became clear, and he said posts under his name were coming directly from the field, not from him. He denied claiming responsibility for downing the transport plane.
5) The intercepts
The fifth set of evidence is the most clear-cut. On Thursday evening, the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, released recordings of several conversations it alleged were between separatist rebels. Some involve senior commanders, including Colonel Vasyl Mykolaiovych Geranin, who the SBU say is a serving Russian military officer.
“Just now a plane was hit and destroyed by the miners group,” one rebel called Besler tells Colonel Geranin.
“On TV they’re saying now that it is an An-26, a Ukrainian transporter. But what’s written on it is Malaysia Airlines,” another recording says. “There is a sea of bodies, women, children.”
The recording is clear and gives no indication of having been staged. Western intelligence officials told the FT they believed it to be accurate.
FT
New York, was it .. ? 
