Alleged MH17 collaborator was put on a Canadian sanction list last week

One of the men implicated in shooting down MH17 over the eastern Ukraine was added to a Canadian sanctions list earlier this week as a result of his role in the Ukrainian civil conflict.

The Ukrainian government identified Mykola Ivanovych Kozitsyn in an intercepted telephone call in which a pro-Russian militant described the scene after MH17 had been shot down.

In the recording, the militant tells ‘Kozitsyn’ that the plane’s debris indicates that it was a passenger aircraft rather than a military transport.

“Well then it was bringing spies,” the man alleged to be Kozitsyn says.

“Why the hell were they flying? This is war going on.”

Kozitsyn is understood to be serving as a general with the Cossacks Forces Army and acts as a key figure in the coordination of pro-Russian militants throughout the eastern Ukraine.

Armed Cossack troops entered the Ukrainian civil conflict in March, when they assisted separatists in Crimea to break away from centralised control in Kiev.

Cossacks are an ethnic subculture within the former Soviet Union, united by a strict adherence to Orthodox Christianity and the belief that much of Eastern Europe should be controlled by the Russian government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a staunch supporter of the Cossacks, giving them the status of a state-backed militia in 2005 and using them to patrol the streets of Sochi during the Winter Olympics in February.

Kozitsyn was one of fourteen pro-Russian militia added to the Canadian sanction list, which imposes economic sanctions and travel bans on those thought to be inflaming violence in Ukraine.