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Buk anti-air system is a complex system, so to operate this needs more than a few drunken man. And the western headlines in newspapers (even here Hungary) said that this was the russians from the first minute, when noone, execpt soldiers know what was the situation. BTW, our official (our?) media said that there is no drafting in ukraine. Only voluntiers. Some people here as I have relatives in Ukraine. (TransCarpathia was a Hungarian land more that 1000 years, and there is a lot of Hungarians live there.) So there is drafting. You have to choice to go to the army or to the jail.

@Derringer

Some of these rebells are ex-Ukrainian military
Others may very well be Russian soldiers "in disguise" (just like on Crimera)

They have also proven pretty capable of shooting down miltrary aircraft.


So, yeah a major f##kup by the rebells still seems the by far most likely scenario.

@Jim: Your in-depth knowledge of Russian people and politics (and the whole Ukraine story) is based on what, exactly?

I won't be commenting Ukraine situation here (I think politics and religion are best avoided on online forums, if possible).

However, I have a feeling not everyone might know the history of US foreign policy (and resulting military actions) that well. Here are couple of documentaries that - even when not perfect - give some rather good explanation as to why US is in the position they are today:

The Fog of War - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/
Why We Fight - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436971/

Thanks Harry,
I promise to look at those.

>With the long standing history of failed US foreign policy from south america to Iran and rushing into pointless wars without a proper cause nor plan (Vietnam, Irak just to name the biggest f##kups) I can wholehearty give that back at you guys !


OK, all of you should realize, I'm not "you guys".
I'm just a citizen (not a politician) that grew up during the Vietnam War.
So, yeah, I know we can f*ck up, bad.

But in politics, we have to make choices that often comes down to the lesser of two evils.
And while, unlike many of my fellows citizens, I won't hold up the US as a paragon of virtue I still think we represent that choice.

Dutch point of view:
Well, the situation is now that researchers are not allowed by the rebelsany more to visit the erea. The bodies of the victims have been removed and Dutch researchers are not allowed to see the bodies. So from a Dutch point of view we have a lot of problems with that 'rebels. We don't trust thrust them. So here we think that the rebels try to hide a lot of things. (oh, by the way, 193 Dutch people were killed in this attack... and family of the victims are still not allowed to visit the area to identify their beloved ones. )

With regards, Tom

Derringer wrote:

Quote:

So you're trying to say that the Smolensk catastrophe back in 2010 was arranged by Putin (he had a good reason to get rid of Polish president and some of those who accompanied him)?
Sometimes shit happens, sometimes someone might be mistaken, sometimes the true motives behind somebodys action remain uncertain...

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Are you serious? Do you know what's really happening in Ukraine? Kidnapping, torturing and killing innocent people by the "separatists" happens all the time.

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I would call it a "hide your head in the sand policy". OK, someone beat you in the past. Does that fact entitle him to do whatever he wants? After Munich 1938, when Chamberlain returned home waving a paper that was to ensure "peace for our time" Winston Churchill summed it up by saying: "England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war". What will the world choose today?

Jim, why the hell you're blaming Russians in that tragedy?
Dumb UA militaries shot the airliner like they've already done that on 4th of october 2001. They're too scared and shooting everything moves already. Also dumb UA traffic control led that liner to fly over the dangerous territory with active ukrainian anti-air forces deployed (what are they doing there if separatists have no air force???). Also how do separatists can fight down that liner if it was at 11km height and "strela" works only over 4.5km and they do not have any other anti-air guns? If they do have other anti-air guns why are they letting UA air forces to bomb civil objects and kill many civilians?

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Well, you singled out "the Europeans", which, as others pointed out, is hardly a description for a politically or culturally coherent group of people, and strongly criticized them for supposedly favoring economic over moral considerations with regard to the situation in the Ukraine.

My example was merely intented to show that, if we use the same viewpoint and standards for a comparison and assume that your base assumption was correct, "the Europeans" would probably not be acting differently than nations such as your home country, therefore do not deserve to be singled out in this manner.

@QMaster

I see you have been reading only local Russian news. Russian media is firmly controlled by Kreml. You will not get any impartial reporting from them. At least two reporters of RT have resigned lately.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/russia-today-reporter-quits-ukraine-plane-propaganda.html

My apologies, Andre.
The thread title was conceived before I reviewed today's news coverage.
People in countries outside the direct influence of Russia do seem quite concerned.

@ QMaster - Why blame Russia? Because it appears that airliner was shot down with a Russian weapon fired by Russian backed separatists. The theories you are floating don't make sense.

Not all Americans believe the US government should be involved all over the world, trying to influence other governments, or fight Fascists, or Communists, or any other forms of governments. Personally, I don't think our foreign policy should be to interfere unless we are asked to intervene by the current legitimate government of any other country, and even then, we should not become involved unless human rights are being violated and lives threatened.

The people of each country must determine what kind of leadership they will live with, and often fight and die for what they believe in to make changes, when other peaceful methods are not successful.

I believe that the USA should be more isolated and concentrate on our own problems at home, instead of spending billions of dollars anywhere else around the world. How can we gain the respect of any people or country outside of our own, when we do not solve our own problems first.

We should only act when begged to act in support of any other people or country, and only in combination with several other countries, but sadly this is not how our current foreign policy works for many decades. There is very little to be proud about being an American these days.

Maybe Jim should include a BIG disclaimer that these views and opinions are his own, and not typical of all Americans.

[ Edited by WB_Coder 20.07.2014 - 09:22 ]

Funny WB, but I don't think your view accurately express how the majority of US citizens feel either (not that my view are meant to be representative).
I would hope that, regardless of country, anyone would feel outrage at a situation like this.

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Thanks for the independent and truthful media of the glorious free West then...

Nobody knows what's going on. No one. But at least everyone thinks he is informed well enough to hate the other side. The term "sheep" comes to mind.

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Please, let's not equivocate.
Everyone knows what's going on, except the Russians.

And its their resources that are being shipped in to support the Ukrainian insurgency while they almost all proudly back Putin.
So who are the sheep?

I can't see why USA acts as bully of the world and is always sending mercenaries everywhere and starting wars far away from their frontiers. If there was a war in Europe the main winner would be USA, happy to sell weapons and sending USA companies to rebuild structures (and creating debt). If you want to start a war please do it in your own ground and see your cities destroyed and your children dying.

I prefer to have stable and good neighbours and to keep Ukraine fascists and rusophobe countries out of the European Union as some of these countries are more interested in starting 3rd WW with Russia than in soving their problems.

Stealing gas from Russia is pathethic but it's even more pathethic that supposedly serious countries like USA back that behaviour (that sons of USA government/companies are presidents of Ukranian Gas companies surely doesn't have nothing to do with this right?).

Timoshenko and "Porkyshenko" should be in jail, first for promoting killing russians and the second one for killing russian people (children included).

Putin's plane was going to fly around 30 minutes later than the one that was shot, and both use red, white and blue... I imagine "Yats" would receive lots of $$$ as reward if they killed Putin.

USA caused that previously stable countries like Libia, Siria, Irak have active islamic terrorists. Poor Sadam Hussein just wanted to sell petrol barrels using Euros in addition to dollars and USA wiped him. Every time USA economy goes down USA starts a war far away from your frontiers.

BTW, if you want to talk about invasions let's talk about the invasion of Mexico when USA started a war to steal 1/2 territory of Mexico. It's funny that some rednecks hate Mexicans... come on, Mexicans are returning to their territories and you are the invasors, they are claiming their lands back

Personally,I love Mexicans (they are really hard workers).
But after all that ranting, what does any of it have to do with Russian weapons being fired by Russian backed rebels on a civilian aircraft?

What does ANY of this anti-USA rhetoric have to do with outlaw Russian behavior?

And who is trying to steal something?
Oh yeah, the Russians appear to want part or all of the Ukraine.

Couldn't have anything to do with that Naval base, eh?

You want to go on the offensive?
Apparently its more convenient than addressing the facts.

Quote:
Western media in general is at least free to report, unlike Russian media. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#Worldwide_press_freedom_index and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Russia

Of course they (western media) are free to report untruths as well. It is left up to the reader to figure out what the trustworthy media outlets are.

[ Edited by Piru 21.07.2014 - 00:05 ]

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Seriously why would Putin fly over the country he is in the war with?

News agents here in China are speculating that separatists misidentified the plane thinking it was Ukraine Air Force. But that is just Chinese.

@Jim
>> Why blame Russia? Because it appears that airliner was shot down with a Russian weapon fired by Russian backed separatists. The theories you are floating don't make sense.

Who said that?


@Piru I don't think that I'm completely informed, but I can read in 2 languages and I see what is your "independent" press is writing about me living here and seeing what is happening in real. Our is controlled by Kreml and your's by who will give more money for post.

Anyway, why no one of you noticed that UA forces already shot the airliner once? It was in 2001 and it was a proven fact. I don't see any reasons why sholdn't they do it once more.
And nobody told here WHY do separatists and Kreml need that shot airliner? If they do, they'll make it fall on UA-army controlled territory, not their own.

I wonder who has the "best" track record in shooting down commercial airliners... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents

In some places human life is just not appreciated.


+ I wish there was a way to handle those chrisis.

one way: isolate them and let them kill themself?

**********
>Also dumb UA traffic control led that liner to fly over the dangerous territory...

There was also Indian airliner 25km distance of the malaysian one. As we can see the malesian airliner slightly changed it's flight path, it could be to stay away the Indian plane.
But I agree that no airliner is safe to fly over the most eastern parts of europe... too many airliners downed allready.

limitations on the area: https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.scribblelive.com/2014/7/18/cd6d2448-8b5c-4172-a162-da3e7ae71027.jpg

> Also how do separatists can fight down that liner if it was at 11km height...

We have seen BUK missile systems go around on the streets of the mentioned area. (not possible to fake as every person can verify the map from satellite images)

But sure, it's not possible to say who pressed the fire button.

(from captured telephone conversations, it seems to be the russian aligned forces. Also the separatist did have "party" with the matter on their web blog (before it was found out that it was a civilian plane).)

> If they do have other anti-air guns why are they letting UA air forces to bomb civil objects and kill many civilians?

They have shot down several military aircrafts already (including UA cargo plane).
To my understanding the "bombing" is done by figter planes that fly way lower than passenger planes, to be able to hit targets. +fighter planes have anti missile measures, so separatist can not down every UA plane with 100% accuracy, that's why some bombs get through.

(One note about using BUK system that might have taken from UA base by separatists: UA BUK system is set not to hit friendly planes. So, unless there is a know how to disable that "block", separatists could not use that device (unless they have the know how to "reprogram the BUK system"). Far simpler would seem to get another BUK system from russia.)

***********
http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/archive/02010/Flight_MH17_2010997a.jpg

"It disappeared in virtually the same location as the Ukrainian military transport AN-26 shot down by a missile a few days before."
Every big plane is not a transport plane. They know it now.
Russians to deside if these are all fake:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/07/18/smoking-guns-russian-separatists-shot-down-malaysian-plane/

...
"Ukrainian aviation authorities had raised the closed airspace zone in the area from 26,000 to 32,000 feet on Monday after military aircraft were shot down."
"Before the crash, 300 commercial aircraft a day were flying through eastern Ukrainian airspace, most on long-haul flights between Europe and Southeast Asia."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-plane-disappears-over-ukraine-feared-shot-down-by-missile/2014/07/17/0fffe1e6-0dcb-11e4-8341-b8072b1e7348_story.html

********************

I wonder if the location is known yet where this video was recorded:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AyWUQ7i0N0
To me it seems that on that location there was in deed a missile capable to reach high altitude.

******************

also the location of thsese shots would be nice to know:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699170/Is-BUK-missile-launcher-shot-MH17-smuggled-Russia-Motorist-captures-military-truck-carrying-BUK-M1-border-town.html

Buk missile systems going home etc:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2696847/They-shouldnt-f-g-flying-There-war-going-Ukraine-intelligence-officials-release-phone-calls-claim-PROVES-Russia-shot-Flight-MH17.html

***********

It will be interesting to see if those black boxes will be lost forever (miraculously, again)... or when extracted there's just some p*rn inside.

((some suggest that Ukraine military had taken air traffic control & directed the plane to be shot down. black boxes would clear that "investigation"))
********

I wonder if they manage to destroy all the bodies as well:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699787/Bodies-MH17-crash-victims-tossed-rubbish-trucks-carted-morgue-train-Putin-warns-West-Dont-use-tragedy-selfish-political-goals.html
Wait a week or two and they manage to make it look 100% like cargo plane crash...

********
@jim

For example for Finland, the situation is nasty. M$ has just caused huge hike in unemployment in this country and as Russia is a hugely important neighbour country for export... If EU ends up desiding that borders to Russia must be "closed", it would pretty much kill us. But anyway, if there is no other way, it will be done.

**************

@problem

What if we would have military force that would be controlled by a politically independent country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_neutrality_%28international_relations%29

perhaps a good idea, except for the big boys

****twitter*****
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/18/5915721/who-to-follow-for-the-latest-on-mh17

******NEWS source*******

I think Finland should have pretty balanced news feed, so I dare to recommend:
http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/
And to help to filter through: http://haku.yle.fi/#/?q=ukraine

[ Edited by KimmoK 21.07.2014 - 13:27 ]

@ Kimmok - If they had been isolated, they would not have had Russian supplied surface to air missiles, so...

The US has a very special way to interfere in the name of "justice" or "democracy". The american way of life cannot be simply exported like "coca cola" in some countries where the culture is not really compatible with democracy. IT only adds to the mess, or most of the time, make it worse (afghanistan, irak, somalia, etc). So americans should work on solving their own issues (guns, killing in schools) first before giving lessons to the world and trying to restore their supremacy.
The main issue with Europe is that it's nothing but a bunch of nations who don't agree on anything but financial matters. Some countries keep blocking diplomatic things, most of the time the ones who are the closest diplomatically to the US...

Quote:

CCCP did that to Korean airliner in 1983.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

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They were mistaken and thought it was a military aircraft. Separatists dont have means to reliably detect airplane type and Russia made mistake when they decided to supply separatists with BUKs, that is all.

Or maybe Ukraine thought it was Russian military aircraft and launched the missile. Who knows for sure althought evidence is pointing at separatists. At least both sides, Ukraine and Russia have confirmed it was downed with BUK.

As a member from Australia, we lost roughly 30 Australian lives on that doomed flight. At least three of those thirty lives were children aged between roughly 5 and 12 (going off memory) and all three children were from the same family, traveling home with their grandfather while their parents spent a few more days in Amsterdam.

I read the paper today and saw a shot on the front page of the mother sobbing while the father attempted to comfort her while obviously trying to come to grips with unimaginable grief himself.As a father myself I tried to imaging the unthinkable loss these people must be feeling and I came to understand that I just cannot even begin to grasp the dark reality these poor people are facing.

Even with the naked eye there is literally no mistaking a commercial airliner and to fire at one with surface to air missiles is just unthinkable.

While the concept of an eye for an eye is the first thing that pops into one's mind, and I hope the people responsible for this unthinkable act are brought to justice, I moreso hope that the poor individuals left behind struggling to cope with their dispair and loss somehow find peace in the not too distant future and are able to in some way lead as close as possible to a normal existance in hope that maybe one day they will meet up with their loved ones once again.

May all the victims rest in peace, especially those young angles taken before they even had a chance to experience all life has to offer.