Will Stewart / MailOnline – 2014-11-07 22:44:47

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2821774/Ukraine-halt-subsidies-rebel-held-areas.html

Former Russian Secret Service Chief
Accuses the West of a ‘Cover-up’ over MH17
As Ukraine Cuts Subsidies to Rebel-held Regions
To Avoid ‘Funding Terrorists’
Will Stewart / MailOnline

MOSCOW (November 5, 2014) — Western secret services were today accused of a cover-up over the shooting down of flight MH17 by a retired chief in Vladimir Putin’s military intelligence agency.

Retired Lt. Gen. Nikolai Pushkarev — formerly a senior official Russia’s notorious secret service, GRU — implied that the aircraft was shot out of the sky by Ukrainian forces.

The conspiratorial allegation came as Ukrainian prime minister announced that state subsidies for the eastern territories controlled by pro-Russian separatists will be frozen for an unspecified amount of time.

The official investigation into the MH17 disaster in July is still ongoing, but Western sources have pointed the finger at pro-Russian rebels downing the aircraft with a BUK missile.

However, Pushkarev claims the investigation is being used to put blame on Russia.

‘Western intelligence and the Americans are very well aware of all the details — who shot flight MH17 down, why and what for,’ he alleged. They ‘manipulate this information and this incident for their own benefit.

‘This provocation was organised to lay blame on Russia and force it into sending troops to Ukraine, officially. But the Russian government did not succumb to this provocation’. He alleged that the US was trying to spark ‘direct military conflict between Russia and Ukraine’.

The conspiratorial allegation came as separatist officials in Donetsk claimed eye-witnesses saw a second mysterious aircraft in the sky as the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down in July.

‘Onlookers said that immediately after the Boeing had exploded they saw a smaller, grey plane moving in the area of the Boeing’s air route, which then disappeared in the clouds.’

A source claimed that ‘more than 20 onlookers were questioned’ in regard to the ‘sighting’, but did not give more details.

Both rebels and Russian officials have previously suggested a Ukrainian aircraft was in the sky, and some have claimed it shot down MH17, killing all 298 people on board.

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