The third week of MH17 court hearings is underway - this week (i.e. today and tomorrow), the defense of indicted suspect Oleg Pulatov will be presenting his defense pleadings.

The defense team warns that they will not be making a guilt plea this week, but will comment on the investigation conducted so far, and will ask for additional investigations to be made. The lawyer says he will give a "different view" of MH17's case.

Defense tries to sow doubt in the investigation due to the obstacles of investigating in a war-zone, suggesting evidence may have been destroyed or planted, delayed or impossible data provision, and lack of experience in investigating missile shoot-downs in the Netherlands.

One example given was that JIT depended on SBU's phone intercepts. Defense doesn't imply they were doctored but that they were one-sided - i.e. SBU intercepted DNR militants and not Ukraine's military communications.

Defense: "no real witnesses of the launch, or motivation for the crime were identified. The case depends primarily on experts analysis. We must assume experts are right, but how can we be sure? Were there peer-reviews of their findings?"

Defense criticizes JIT for not trying to interrogate people from the phone intercepts and clarify the meaning of what was said. Also, didn't interrogate (not sure whom) to find out the meaning of the added "M" in the logbook provided by Russia's MoD.

"If the motive and chain of command is yet unknown, how can we be sure what responsibilities Pulatov had and what role played? The indictment against the client was made too early"

Interestingly, Defense invokes crucial role of Tsemakh (whom Ukraine exchanged in a prisoner-swap under pressure from Russia). Says he must have had crucial role as commander of Snizhne air-defense, and client Pulatov may have acted under orders.

Defense criticizes JIT for announcing as early as 2015 and 2016 that it was certain that the plane was shot down by a BUK, played intercepts and showed the Arena test. Defense implies JIT "steered public opinion".

Oddly, the Defense is going on and on about the JIT focusing on the main BUK scenario early on and not giving equal weight to the alternative scenarios. Defense says it will request investigation of these alternative scenarios.

Further, Defense requests a chronological overview of the investigation showing how different choices on how to proceed were made at every point in the investigative process.

Defense accuses JIT of relying on telecoms data (intercepts & metadata) obtained by SBU. "It is striking phone calls only referred militants and not Ukrainian air-force military. Did the JIT ask for such calls? We just don't know"

(Note: while Defense uses legitimate procedural means to de-legitimize the investigation, it adopts some easily rebuttable conspiracy theories promoted by Russia - which will be very easy for the prosecutors to discard... not necessarily a winning strategy)

Criticism of decision not to analyze soil samples from the launch site (which were collected 11 months after launch). Says soil samples collected immediately after test launch had residues, so why not after 11 months? (uhhm.. they did analyze...found nothing).

"Why wait 11 months? Couldn't they find an ingenious way to have someone, like a journalist, go to DNR-controlled territory and collect samples?" << This is so aggressively dumb that I don't think the judge will take lightly to it.

(JIT could never risk sending a journalist on an undercover mission into a war zone, and no one other than JIT could bring usable soil samples due to chain-of-custody requirements)

Defense points to JIT interviewing some witnesses without disclosing them to Ukraine, implying this may be as JIT didn't want them to be indicted for other crimes and thus lose credibility. This ignores the obvious reason: witnesses not feeling safe SBU won't leak their ID to RU

Defense complains JIT discarded as incorrect *some* early information provided by SBU, such as a launch from Hrabovo, while accepting other SBU information that was supported by other evidence (duh). Complains when Russia was wrong with information, it was seen as misleading.

(Awkwardly, after complaining so far of over-reliance on SBU-fed info, now defense says JIT didn't always take into account SBU info)

Defense now takes issue with JIT accusing Russia of misleading the investigation while the Dutch Safety Board earlier complimented Russia. "Why not make Russia member of the JIT?", defense lawyer says. "No legal impediment not to.."

(yes, there is a legal impediment in inviting the main suspect - which by the time JIT was formed Russian military forces were - into the investigation team)

Oh my god. Defense now plays Colin Powell's Irag WMD tape to try to discredit SBU's information. (Very cheap, will not go well in Dutch court)

The reason these theatrics are a cheap shot meant for public-opinion is that JIT's partner is not the intel department of SBU (equivalent to CIA) but the investigative department of SBU (equivalent to FBI).

Now defense plays a local separatist from Donetsk claiming Ukraine wanted to provoke a shoot-down of a civilian plane

The Defense floats the hypothesis of Ukrainian military planes using MH17 as a shield to fly under it and prevent shoot-down, "which would mean Ukraine could be prosecuted for war crimes"

(an interesting legal approach, as this would not in any way exculpate their client... seems to be a political argument in favor or Russia, not of Pulatov).

Now defense describes the "coup" that took place in Ukraine in February 2014 that ousted president Yanukovich by "pro-Western nationalists"... "demonstrators shot by snipers, likely pro-Western nationalists" << the loaded terminology used here sets Defense up for disaster.

"Ukraine is no Denmark. It stands very low at the corruption index. Recently prosecutors were dismissed including the JIT prosecutor. One of them said "this was the case of my life, wanted to prove Russia shot down MH17" - this proves prejudice."

(this last quote was completely taken out of context, so again, this will not go well in court).

Hearing resumes after a short break. Defense will now try to resuscitate the air-to-air scenario.

Now defense plays a sequence of witnesses who claim they saw Ukrainian warplanes shoot down MH17. Sources include RT, Graham Philips, and Bonanza Media

and this guy who "saw the actual air-to-air missile come out of a fighter plane and hit MH17 which was above the clouds"

Now, former Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko claims he sees evidence in the holes that the pilot's stomach area was shot at by an air-to-air attack.

Defense says the two journalists who made these interviews were interrogated, but "we don't know if these interrogations led to further investigations". Defense asks prosecutors to interview all subjects of these videos who claimed they saw fighter jets.

Defense says JIT interviewed 24 people who said they saw - or heard from others who saw - fighter jets near MH17. "Could they all lie? Maybe the other witnesses lied, or could not have seen the fighter jets? We feel the investigation was not complete"

Defense wants the court to interrogate again all witnesses who said they saw one or two fighter jets attack MH17, or ones who shot fighter jets downed on that day - but also all witnesses who said the opposite - to check if they may have just missed to see a fighter jet.

AAAAAAH!!!!! THEY WANT THE AIR-CONTROLLER CARLOS TWITTER METADATA!!!!

I am sorry, i can't cover this hearing in good faith anymore - the Defense invoked (the fake Russian account of) Carlos the Air-dispatcher as a potential witness

For the last half hour, defense has tried to argue that the absence of a fighter jet in the Russia-provided radar data is no proof there was no fighter jet (with this, defense literally argues against Russia's official position).

Almaz Antey, who kept and analyzed the Russian primary radar data, wrote in their report that "there are no technical limitations that would not record an object flying at <1000 m/s (a fighter jet's top speed would be @ 700 m/s)

Prosecutor takes the floor by exception to accuse the defense of flagrantly misrepresenting that the Ukrainian prosecutor Oleg Peresada was fired due to corruption. "He left the prosecution by his choice, and continues to work with JIT. He was never dismissed"

Defense now cites "Agapov", the Ukrainian technician who claimed to a Russian newspaper that Ukrainian pilot Voloshin had shot down MH17. This witness was totally discredited, and wasn't even credited by Russia - just be conspiracy theorists and propagandists. And the lawyers.

now defense calls pilot Voloshin's death "highly suspicious" and alludes he was eliminated by Ukraine to preclude contradicting the evidence that no military fighter jet flew over DNR on 17.07. This is now totally on the far side of conspiracies, pretty desperate

Here's the plan: Russia created about 53 crazy alternative scenarios over the last 5 years, each involving between 1 and 100 "crisis actors". And now the defense asks the JIT to spend equal time to each of these scenarios - and interview hundreds of bonkers witnesses.

Now Defense asked the original blackbox recorder because it doesn't trust that the Dutch Safety Board didn't manipulate the data...