Malaysian plane crashes on Ukraine-Russia border - live

[Igel]

56. Making some awfully big assumptions there.

This is the first plane allegedly shot down by the Ukrainians. Even choppers that violated their airspace weren't shot down. And they had pretty much nobody there--and the closest place they could have the right kind of installation is probably out of range. That's going to be a tough call for fact-based analysis.

The Ukrainians would also have had the flight information from civilian radar and transponder signals. And zero to no military radar in the area. The rebels are proud of that point. The Russians have their military radar but control would have just passed or been about to pass to Russian airspace control. Don't know where the borders are for that kind of thing--even Crimea, whatever the Russian media say, is still officially Ukrainian airspace according to the international civilian aeronautics board.

What's left to account for are the immediate reports from rebel sources that it was an An-26 that was shot down. Although they did use the passive (not "my sbili" 'we shot down' but just the passive "sbit" 'was shot down'). This might be official speculation or just more rah-rah jingoism from the separatists.

Then there were reports that it couldn't have been a Boeing-777. It had the profile of a military plane.

Only when it was confirmed on the ground was it suddenly something shot down by the Ukrainian military. Even though the rebels are proud of being able to shoot down planes over 20k feet. And given Snizhne recently, may well have believed this (as their first reports were) to be something that could drop bombs. The rebels also have no good radar or air-recon (except what's provided by the Russians) and would have gone by visual sighting.

Either way, it's Russian provided equipment or Russian men involved. Perhaps some of the anonymous "little green men" that surfaced earlier today?

No, that would violate an article of faith.