Almost exactly one year ago, the world was nearly brought to the verge of a global war by proxy involving the US and Russia (and Europe and China) over a staged, false flag YouTube clip "proving" the Assad regime had used toxic gas (gas that was made in Britain as it was later revealed) to kill several hundred civilians in the country's ongoing war against what subsequently turned out to be al-Qaeda funded and trained rebels (and which now are fighting across the border with another former US-puppet state, Iraq). Luckily, back then an all out confrontation was averted in the last minute over what was ultimately nothing but a gambit by Qatar to have its gas pipeline enter Europe and leave Gazprom in the cold (literally and metaphorically).

A year later, it is deja vu all over again, when the same energy and geopolitical tensions (Europe, natural gas, etc) are once again at the frontline, and while the theater of combat may be different, the same key players - Russia and the US - are once again behind the proxy conflict in Ukraine, and where Gazprom is once again the fulcrum party. The only missing link was a YouTube clip which would bring the world to the edge of war again.

Moments ago Ukraine released what may be just that missing "YouTube" link, when it unveiled a 2:23 minute video supposedly proving that "militants of "Bes" group shot down with a Russian anti-aircraft missile a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 passenger jet heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur."

In the clip, Ukraine presents what it alleges are several recorded conversations, first of all between a pro-Russian separatist and his coordinator Vasyl Geranin, who is said to be a colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. In summary, this conversation talks about the downing of a jet. There is no distinction whether this is a civilian or a military jet, and may well refer to the shot down Ukrainian Su-25 which we reported earlier today was shot down overnight, and which Ukraine at first claimed had been shot down by a Russian warplane, something which Russia promptly denied hours later (and before the Malaysian Airline tragedy happened).

The purported smoking gun is "revealed" in the second section which begins 43 seconds and lasting one minute in between a "Major" and "Grek" who are also allegedly Russian rebels. It is here that the conversation goes into explicit detail describing the contents of the downed airplane, and makes it clear that it is a civilian airplane, describing the civilian carnage, and stopping just why of naming this a Malaysian Airlines flight.

This is the key segment as it explicitly makes it clear that the plane the alleged separatists in the first part were talking about was not the Su-25 but MH 17. The only problem is that there is absolutely no way to confirm who "Major" and "Grek" are, and considering the entire Ukraine civil war has been merely one provocation and counter-provocation after another, explicitly staged in advance by either the CIA on the side of Kiev or the Kremlin on the Russian side, one does have to wonder whether the said two "smoking gun" participants aren't merely two random people speaking Russian and reading off a script?

The clip concludes with another unnamed "Militant" who supposedly is speaking to Mykola Kozitsyn, one of the purported leaders of the Cossacks operating in east Ukraine. The Militant makes it clear to Kozitsyn that it is not a military plane and has "Malaysian Airlines" written on the side. One wonders just where one could find such writing on the side of the crashed and exploded fuselage but that one is for the forensics to decide.

In other words, if indeed all the participants in this YouTube are as they have been presented, then surely this does put the pro-Russian rebel movement in a very unsavory light.

And yet, something here smells very fishy...

First, the Russian version of the clip which was released in parallel, and shown below, there is a major discrepancy in the time stamp, with the English-dubbed version showing the conversation between Major and Grek taking place at 5:11 pm and 5:32 pm, while the original one has it at 4:33 pm, 5:14 pm and 5:32 pm.

Then there is what gmorder has revealed is either a clearly erroneous creation timestamp, or the video was actually uploaded yesterday.

Finally, we clearly have no way of authenticating the recording or the participants, it was just over a month ago, on June 5, when in another attempt to cast blame and discredit the separatists, Ukraine released another trademark YouTube clip seeking to disparage and frame Kozitsyn, titled "Russian Cossack Formations are Responsible For Chaos In Ukraine."

It was released in Ukraine Investigation where the author writes as follows:

Here’s a transcription of the video where one of the Cossack atamans, Kozitsyn Mykola Ivanovych, discredits himself and gives orders to kill people, promises to transfer weapons and supplies on the territory of Ukraine from Russia and mentions that there are people standing above him. From this point goes the video transcription.

The video from June 5 is shown below.

What is quite striking is that the production quality is identical between the two clips, in everything from the design, to the scene and caption selection to the layout of the dubbing. All done very professionally. The only thing missing in the original clip is that translation which was conveniently added to today's alleged framing of the same Russian forces - after all it is for global consumption - and the very same "cossack" Kozitsyn. A cossack who, the Ukraine defense ministry would want the world to believe, was so stupid he not only knew he was being recorded (as proven explicitly by the pre-existing June 5 recording release, proving every conversation of his was captured "on tape", something he himself most certainly would be aware of), but would also speak unencrypted and on the record - just like Victoria Nuland did back in February when her leaked recording showed it was the US that was the mastermind behind the Ukraine unrest in the first place - going into gruesome detail of just what kind of plane it is that his men had taken down.

Was he really that stupid? Or is this merely yet another false flag provocation from the same "masterminds" that tried to launch another world war to benefit a few billionaire Qatari emirs with nothing but a YouTube clip in the summer of 2013?

Somehow we doubt we will ever know the true answer, but that is largely irrelevant: the opinion of the world as to who is at fault here is most certainly very much made up by now anyway, and if it isn't, the "unbiased" media will certainly help, even it has nothing but repetitive soundbites and speculation presented as fact, in the coming days.