Ukraine used fighter planes to shoot down MH17

The argument

A freelance journalist from Berlin interviewed over 100 people in the region surrounding the crash site, multiple citizens said that they had seen a fighter jet near MH17 before it crashed, and one said that he saw a missile coming from a plane. Russian air force chief Lt. General Igor Makushev stated in a press conference that russian radar spotted another aircraft with MH17 that day, and suggested that it was probably a Ukranian fighter jet. To corroborate this, Yana Erlashova, a russian reporter for the network Russia Today, along with the help of the Russian air force, was able to prove that the Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet could reach the 33,000 ft. altitude needed that MH17 was at in order to shoot it down. Beyond this, Russian news networks released satellite photos of a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet firing a missile at the MH17 plane.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Many people point out large contradictions in this theory. The main contradiction being that the alleged satellite photos of the Ukrainian fighter jet firing a missile at MH17 was proven to be a fake photo. Also, Yana Erlashova's experiment only allowed the Su-25's to reach that altitude if they dropped all of their weaponry, which would make it impossible for them to have shot down MH17. The reason that the general may have claimed that there was a second aircraft visible on their radar may have been because oftentimes, when an airplane breaks apart, it can be registered on radar as two aircrafts

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Recollections gathered after the event, in a contested war zone and by an interviewer seeking a particular account, are among the weakest kinds of evidence for identifying an aircraft at 33,000 feet, which is difficult to see or identify from the ground at all. The Dutch-led criminal investigation and the Safety Board inquiry, working from the wreckage, recovered fragments and radar data, concluded the aircraft was destroyed by a surface-launched missile whose distinctive warhead fragments were recovered from the cockpit and the bodies of the flight crew. [Rejecting P2] The sources for the radar claim are the Russian air force and a state broadcaster, both parties to the dispute, and the demonstration undercuts the premise it is meant to support: as the counter notes, the fighter could reach that altitude only stripped of armament, which removes the capability the argument requires. Debris from an airliner breaking up can also register as more than one return. [Rejecting P3] The images were shown to be composites, assembled from an older satellite photograph of the area and a stock image of a Boeing airliner, with the ground features and the aircraft's markings inconsistent with the actual flight. Material demonstrated to have been fabricated cannot corroborate the other premises; it counts against the account that produced it.