ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov (A still image from RT video) Some Western states and Kiev rushed to find Russian involvement in the MH17 crash having no evidence to back their claims, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister told RT. He invited Ukraine to answer 10 questions to prove their commitment to an impartial probe. Speaking to RT, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has criticized Western countries for jumping to conclusions just “24 hours after the crash” while there is no evidence. “They try to show to the whole world that we are responsible for the crash. It is very strange that without any evidence my colleagues from western media would like to find somebody who is responsible for the crash,” Antonov said. “It seems to me that this is part of information warfare which has been started against the Russian Federation and armed forces.” Instead of using the incident as the pretext for groundlessly blaming one of the sides, the catastrophe over Ukrainian ...

A journalist takes photographs at the site of Thursday's Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo, in the Donetsk region July 18, 2014 (Reuters / Maxim Zmeyev) Put yourself in the position of a certain passenger boarding the Malaysian Airlines flight at Amsterdam for the twelve hour trip to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday morning. Given a previous Malaysian flight's mysterious disappearance it's likely he was not the only boarding passenger who was a little nervous when he joked on social media, "If we disappear, this is what the plane looks like." Settling down on the flight then watching the moving map display on the seat in front, you might perhaps see the word 'Ukraine' edge its way across from the right of the screen. Would you not be a little uneasy in the knowledge that quite a lot of planes have been blown out of the skies there recently? That there's a war on? Check out David Cenciotti's 'Aviationist' blog a...

An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at a site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 17, 2014 (Reuters / Maxim Zmeyev) What is happening in the east is a humanitarian catastrophe, with cities under siege, civilians killed, bombing of innocent people, and now on the top of that we have this terrible tragedy with 300 losing their lives, journalist Neil Clark told RT. RT:Do you think there is any connection between this tragedy and the conflict in eastern Ukraine? Neil Clark: It’s very hard to say, isn’t it? It is still early days but there seems to be a remarkable coincidence that this plane just went down for technical reason in this region which faced fighting in the last few weeks. I think it is very wrong for President Poroshenko, the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people to be trying to blame other people for this, to blame the so-called rebels, because there is no evidence of this. We already heard how the s...

Filipino and American marines storm a beach to "rescue" American soldiers held by enemies as part of joint military exercises in Ternate Cavite, 70 kilometers South of Manila (AFP Photo / Jay Directo) Neither China nor the US are interested in full-on military confrontation but both want to play up the potential for it as it allows them to divert more government funds to the defense sector, editor of an independent news web site James Corbett told RT. Amid increasing tension in the South Pacific region, especially over America’s growing military footprint , it is reported the Philippines is transforming Ulugan Bay and nearby villages into a major naval base that may host US warships. Ulugan is only 160 kilometers from the Spratly archipelago, a fiercely contested area in the South China Sea. RT: What will this "military upgrade" mean for the villagers themselves? The Philippines and the United States signed a 10-year security pact when US President Barack Obama visi...

While there are various questions that have already emerged from what was supposed to be Ukraine's "slam dunk" proof confirming Russian rebel involvement in today's MH-17 tragedy, perhaps one just as gaping question emerges when one looks at what is clearly an outlier flight path in today's final, and tragic, departure of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777. Perhaps the best visualization of what the issue is, comes from Vagelis Karmiros who has collated all the recent MH-17 flight paths as tracked by Flightaware and shows that while all ten most recent paths pass safely well south of the Donetsk region, and cross the zone above the Sea of Azov, it was only today's tragic flight that passed straight overhead Donetsk. Why is the diversion from the traditional flight path and passage over the highlighted zone a concern? Because as the following map from the WSJ shows this is precisely where the restricted airspace is. How come the USA was able to "confi...