Malaysian plane crashes on Ukraine-Russia border - live

[Igel]

106. The Ukrainians, as the Russians like to point out, don't really control the east.

In fact, that area is hotly contested. For about 10 miles to either side of Grabovo it's all rebel territory. The area south and SE of that is a hot zone, where the Ukrainians are just barely hanging on. They have little heavy equipment there for fighting back and have lost territory there and taken heavy losses, with constant complaints about the low level of support they're getting--they hold a narrow strip along the border, and the reports about Grad fire from the Russian side of the border have been persistent and widespread. When your back's against the border it's fairly easy to tell what direction the fire's coming in from.

It's most likely that if they were going to bring in something it would be useful against tanks and APCs. If they did have something to shoot down a plane, they'd probably have something to take out choppers and UAVs. If they did have something that could shoot down a plane at that altitude, they'd most likely fire at something they could see (not something 20 miles away) or that had gone overhead (not something crossing from the far NW border).

There's no equivalency in the odds here. Not even close. The default hypothesis is that it was the rebels using Russian-provided equipment. (Why Russian provided? Because for a month of bombing they didn't have this kind of equipment and didn't get it from any new Ukr military bases they took over. Then when it shows up, it shows up right against the Russian border for its first uses, which, if you're going to have SA systems, isn't where you'd put them--you don't want something like that being among the first things captured in case of attack.)