MH17 downing: When a rebel boasted about shooting a plane

Soon as the news broke in of Malaysia Airline flight MH17 being downed in eastern Ukraine, the shadowy commander of the separatists issued a dark warning on the social networking website – VK.com - a Russian version of Facebook.

Zee Media Bureau/Himanshu Kapoor

Kiev: Soon as the news broke in of the Malaysia Airline flight MH17 being downed in eastern Ukraine, the shadowy commander of the separatists issued a dark warning on the social networking website – VK.com - which is said to be a Russian version of Facebook. In his post, the self-proclaimed defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin, boasted about shooting down a plane. “We did warn you — do not fly in our sky," he wrote in his post on the website. Thinking it was a Ukrainian military plane that has been shot down, he continued in his boasting of the downing, writing that “another bird went down behind a slagheap, not in a residential district. So no peaceful people were injured.” However, upon realising that it was actually a commercial jetliner carrying 295 innocent people, not a military aircraft that was shot down, Igor immediately deleted the post. The Malaysian jet which took off from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was on Thursday hit by a missile and crashed in the rebel-held Ukraine. The pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk have been colliding with Ukrainian forces for months and have brought down several military aircrafts.