Bellingcat International investigative group published a new report based on the several tapped telephone conversations in relation to the July 17 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), published by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on 18 July 2014. Most of these conversations, recorded on the day of the downing, are between an officer identified as ‘Khmuryi’ (’Gloomy’ or ‘Grumpy’) and other separatist officers or soldiers of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The SBU identified ‘Khmuryi’ as ‘Sergey Nikolaevich Petrovsky’, a Russian GRU officer, but it took some time before this was covered in-depth by either Western or Russian-language media.
Bellingcat’s conclusion is that the man whose telephone was tapped by the Ukrainian Security Service on 17 July 2014, assuming the SBU correctly identified his voice and/or knew that the intercepted telephone number belonged to him and was thus involved in the transport of the Buk missile launcher that downed MH17 on the same date, is named Sergey Nikolaevich Dubinsky, nicknamed ‘Khmuryi’.
Sergey Dubinsky, born on 9 August 1962, was granted the higher rank of major general in the Donetsk People’s Republic in, apparently, August 2014, shortly after the downing of MH17, and later relocated to the Russian Federation after being expelled from Donetsk for alleged financial crimes. Nowadays Dubinsky lives a fairly luxurious life for Russian standards, in a quiet village, spending time with his family and enjoying rides in an expensive recreational vehicle.
