Кто сбил Малазийский самолёт? (Who shot down the Malaysian aircraft?)

Я уже давно не пишу на украинскую тему, потому что положение там сложное и неоднозначное.
Но я не могу не откликнуться на то, что над Украиной был сбит малазийский самолет и 298 человек погибли не за что.
Сначала я бы хотел выразить соболезнование всем погибшим.
Но, с другой стороны, я очень удивлён, что еще до расследования на Западе и прежде всего в Америке уже объявили виновных - это, конечно, прорусские ополченцы Юго-Востока Украины и сама Россия.
Раз там могут объявлять без всяких доказательств виновных, то и я вправе высказать свои предположения:

  1. Во-первых, кому выгодно это трагическое происшествие - конечно, не повстанцам и не России. Оно может быть выгодно только официальному Киеву, чтобы доказать, какие ужасные эти повстанцы, и поэтому с ними нельзя вести никаких переговоров, и они должны быть только уничтожены, а поддерживающая их Россия должна стать изгоем для всего мира.
  2. Во-вторых, у повстанцев нет системы “Бук”, из которой, возможно, был сбит самолет на высоте 10000 метров. У повстанцев есть только устаревшие переносные системы, достающие до 3000 метров.
  3. В-третьих, местные жители говорят, что они видели перед трагедией два самолета в небе, и может быть, украинский военный самолёт сбил этот гражданский самолет ракетой “воздух-воздух”
  4. В-четвертых, эксперты доказали, что гуляющая по Интернету запись якобы разговора повстанцев о сбитом самолёте, является на самом деле компиляцией из нескольких разговоров - но главное: она сделана за день(!) до того, как самолет был сбит.
    В то же время давайте вспомним такие же странные события, в которых участвовал Киев- непонятные снайперы на майдане, которые стреляли и по милиционерам, и по активистам майдана, чтобы обострить ситуацию и разозлить обе стороны; так и не проясненную до конца трагедию в Одессе, где сгорело более 40 человек, выступавших за федерализацию; и вот теперь еще одна трагедия с тем же почерком.
    И это даёт мне право утверждать, что за трагедией с малазийским самолетом стоит Киев и, возможно, опекающие его разведслужбы США, которым не впервой совершать такие “false flag operations”.
    А людей очень жалко. Они просто пали жертвой этих геополитических операций.
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Too soon, Evgueny

BTW

What about the other Malaysian aircraft? Did that ever get found??

:-0

I can’t believe they have lost two planes full of people in the last 6 months.

@Colin

To lose one plane might be considered unlucky. But to lose two…etc… (The old Oscar Wilde quip!)

The person at the airline who agreed to let the plane fly over a known war zone where a number of military planes have recently been abgeschossen is criminally responsible for negligence, IMO.

I am not going to comment on Evgueny’s faithful rehash of prevailing Russian public opinion. I haven’t the time get involved in a discussion neither with him nor with similarly minded Russians nor their foreign supporters.

With regard to Jay’s typically inane comment.

"ON THE FLIGHT PATH:

On the matter of MH17’s flight path, I would like to refer to recent reported comments by officials from Eurocontrol, the body which approves European flight paths under ICAO rules.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the officials stated that some 400 commercial flights, including 150 international flights crossed eastern Ukraine daily before the crash. Officials from Eurocontrol also stated that in the two days before the incident, 75 different airlines flew the same route as MH17.

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BTW
I’m not making any comment about who is primarily responsible for this awful tragedy - I’m just saying I think airlines have a basic duty of care towards their customers. In my opinion it is reckless and stupid to fly civilian planes over a war zone where aircraft have been downed in recent days/weeks.

(If that is “inane”…well…hell…what can I say? :-0)

(It seems many of the world’s bigger airlines have been avoiding the area in question for months. And quite right too.)

Well I don’t know jack about scheduling flights. Is it normal to fly over warzones? From Steve’s post, it would seem like it is pretty normal. It seems that many other airlines were also using this route up until Thursday. It looks to me like they had good reason to assume that the route over Ukraine was safe. But then again, what do I know? (very little)

Given that we have no idea what happened with the other flight, I can only assume that Malaysia Airlines has been extremely unlucky.

“(It seems many of the world’s bigger airlines have been avoiding the area in question for months. And quite right too.)”

Some of them. Some airlines may be more careful than others, but that doesn’t mean the less careful ones are negligent.

@ Steve

It is unclear to me which parts of your post are quotes and where these quotes come from.

@Colin: “…Some airlines may be more careful than others, but that doesn’t mean the less careful ones are negligent…”

In this particular case I would argue it does, Colin. There is a financial cost to the airlines if they detour their flights around the war zone - that is surely the reason why many of the smaller airlines were prepared to take a risk?

I stand by my comment - I think it is incredible that these people would be exposing their passengers (and crews) to any known and avoidable risk of hostile action.

(Steve may think this is “inane” - but I do wonder whether he himself would knowingly travel over an out-of-control area of the world where people are equipped with SAMs and have been shooting down planes? I suspect not.)

The same flight the day before was 500 km to the South.
But namely this day the Ukrainian Flight Service in Dnepropetrovsk directed this flight more northern, over the battle area.
And it seems to me also very strange and provocative from the Ukrainian Side.
@steve
If you don’t want to know the Russian point of view, it’s very bad to you because you remain to be blind with a stupid Ukrainian Propaganda and aren’t able to see the situation in a larger range. It’s pity.

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The version of the rebells’ responsibility is based on their claimed use of the Buk-complex. Though the Dombass Republic has really got one “9А310М1” from a disarmed Ukrainian military unit. But it was not a real “complex” which consists of four parts, rather just the launch vehicle. To use it you need other three parts of the complex, which they simply don’t have.

Техническое на тему: Специалисты спорят о том, кто и из чего мог сбить малазийский лайнер

@evgueny40
Russian media is a governmental propaganda machine. They were blaming Ukraine from the start, despite having no evidence they still opened their mouths. Russia has motive to frame the Ukrainians, they want to appear infallible. It’s obvious they would blame the Ukrainians no matter what the truth is.

Russians are so convinced it was Ukraine they refuse to accept any evidence that says anything to the contrary. It’s confirmation bias at it’s best. All evidence is pointing towards the separatists, the people who’ve been shooting down aircraft in the region this whole time.

Ukraine has been fighting against the rebels who don’t really have an air presence, so there is no need for Ukrainians to mobilize anti-aircraft weaponry like that, especially so deep in rebel territory. Ukrainians are also winning, the rebels are losing, there is no reason for them to do anything so risky.

Some evidence against the separatists:
1.) They’ve released a recording of militants talking about shooting down the plane and inspecting the site when they discover it is a civil aircraft. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28362872s.

But who knows, maybe this is an elaborate set up.

2.) We have proof that rebels bragged (These people brag about killing others online constantly) to have shot down an AN-26, and then later they deleted these claims once news started to hit that it was a passenger plane. http://i.imgur.com/IMaKN3h.jpg

3.) Rebels from DNR possess BUK (nato SA-11 Gadfly) SAM-missile complex (as reported by Russian media):

“DNR militia took control over military air defence facility № А-1402 with SAM rocket complex BUK”
Ополченцы ДНР взяли под контроль воинскую часть ПВО с зенитно-ракетными комплексами "Бук" - ТАСС 29 june 2014

“Donetsk air is protected by SAM BUK”

“Flash: clean sky above donetsk - spetsnaz DNR captured military air defence base and captured BUK S.A.M.” http://rusvesna.su/news/1404041521

But now the pro-russians deny having this weaponry they were eager to boast about just weeks prior.
There are also photos and video from locals showing the system leaving the area.

4.) These people are allowing locals to walk freely around the crash site, but the international observers aren’t getting full access. Besides being unprofessional they are hindering the investigation, and manipulating it to their benefit.

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One thing that has always bothered me is the kind of moral double standards that we sometimes see from our political and media establishment.

We might make the assumption that it was pro-Russian rebels who shot down this unfortunate Malaysian plane. And we might also assume that they were using equipment supplied by Moscow. (As far as I am aware, the second of these things has not been confirmed - but it wouldn’t seem to be an entirely wild assumption.) Okay, so this was a horrific act. But nobody is suggesting that the rebels did it deliberately - rather it was evidently done stupidly and incompetently in the belief that the target was a military plane belonging to government forces.

Now obviously, something can’t be justified just because it was done in a botched and reckless way, rather than in a calculated way. But most people would perhaps regard mistaken attacks on civilians as being - relatively speaking - less evil than the deliberate targeting of them?

Mistakes can, of course, be made by highly trained professionals as well as by rough-necked militiamen. As we all know, there has been at least one occasion where the US Navy has accidentally shot down a civilian (Iranian) airliner. The context wasn’t by any means parallel to the current situation in the Ukraine, of course. But the bottom line is that innocent civilians were tragically blown up and killed.

Was there quite the same outpouring of angst and grief about that incident? If not, why not?

And what about the civilians who have been killed (and who are still being killed) in Gaza?

Again, there is no suggestion that the situation is directly comparable to the civil war in East Ukraine. I myself am a longstanding supporter of Israel’s right to self-defence against terror attacks on its citizens. But if there are 300 plus innocent Palestinian civilians now dead versus a tiny handful of Israeli casualties…well…the whole thing just doesn’t seem entirely moderate or proportional to me, quite honestly…

There has been huge grief and outrage about the civilians killed in the Malaysian airliner - and understandably so. But do we see quite the same moral standard in our politicians’ responses to the deaths of these Palestinian civilians? I don’t know…

@ Evgueny

“The same flight the day before was 500 km to the South.”

I have had a look into the flight being redirected off course and it appears to be true. However, this number you give of 500 km does not appear to be accurate (I understand you did not directly claim it was redirected 500 km, but from the rest of your message, this appears to be the claim that you made). From a few news sources, it looks like the flight was about 50-200km off course, depending on which source you find.

This story on Daily Tech, for example, says 50-100 km off course

http://www.dailytech.com/Boeing+777+Malaysian+Airlines+Flight+17+Crashes+in+Ukraine/article36235.htm

Now it looks like one can actually check this on Flight Aware. Here you can see the path that the flight took

You can clearly see the path that the flight should have took and the path that it did take. If you click on the image, you get a map with a little bar telling you the scale of the map, and you can clearly see that the flight was about 100 km off course, and clearly not 500 km off course. If it was 500 km off course, it probably would have crashed in Russia.

“But namely this day the Ukrainian Flight Service in Dnepropetrovsk directed this flight more northern, over the battle area.
And it seems to me also very strange and provocative from the Ukrainian Side.”

Did you have a career in air traffic control? Do you have some expertise that allows you to recognise what is ‘very strange’ when it comes to air traffic control? Why does it seem strange to you that the flight was redirected off course? Personally, like more than 99% of people, I know nothing about air traffic control and could not say anything about what is and is not strange.

Anyway, go have another look at the map I linked to. Clearly the flight was redirected while it was still in the middle of Poland. Why do you claim that it was done by ‘Ukrainian Flight Service in Dnepropetrovsk’? Dnepropetrovsk is a very long way away from where the flight was actually redirected. Are they able to redirect flights that are in the middle of Poland? For all I know, they are. I have had a look for some sort of confirmation of this claim of yours, but have found none.

I have to agree with Jay’s last post in its entirely.

My own feeling on this is that we still know very little about what happened. We don’t know if it was Ukrainian, Russian, or pro-Russian rebel forces that shot down the plane. I would bet a lot of money on it being the third of those three, but who really knows. Even if it was pro-Russian rebels, do we know where they got their weapons and to what extent they were supported by Russian? I guess not.

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Further to the Guardian article that I linked to in an earlier post, I see the Daily Mail is also reporting that a number of major airlines had already been detouring their flights around the war zone for many weeks prior to the recent tragedy. Furthermore, it is claimed that some of the Malaysian crews were deeply unhappy about having to fly over an area where a number of military aircraft have been shot down by SAMs - some apparently actually refusing to do so.

The airline itself is (predictably enough) denying that it did anything wrong. Apparently they think it’s fine to be reckless with passengers’ lives as long as competitors are doing likewise…

@Robert: “…The difference between Israel and its enemies is that Israel tries its best to avoid civilian casualties (albeit, it obviously fails to do so too often), while its enemies are consciously and systematically targeting civilians…”

I agree - this is an important distinction. One might also add that the terrorist elements often deliberately hide their weapons near to homes and schools - which is pretty disgraceful.

Still, when there is quite so much civilian blood being spilled in Gaza, one has to wonder whether there isn’t some degree of restraint which the Israeli government could exercise?

And I emphasise again: I say this as someone who is (and who has always been) broadly supportive of Israel.