Broke: Russians downed MH17 so Russia must pay reparations, withdraw from the Ukraine, Putler must go to the Hague.
Woke: Muh Ukrainian false flag. scribbles 5,000 words on obscure alt media webzine that no-one will read
Bespoke: Russians downed MH17 and Russia must face up to it like a civilized, Western country (i.e. no apologies, no acknowledgement of responsibility, award a medal to whoever’s responsible).
Are there any new developments about this or why did you post that (you wrote pretty much the same years ago iirc)?
I still think Russia ought to pay compensation for that, and imo the cretins who shot MH17 down ought to be punished for their incompetence. Probably not going to happen, but the Dutch have every reason to be outraged (doesn’t matter to Russia of course).
The Americans are hypocrites of course, but that doesn’t make Russian behaviour in this case any better.
Agreed. It was an unfortunate accident, not a war crime, and our persistent denials only make us look guilty.
I also think that this accident could have been avoided if the Kremlin took care to warn international flight operators, that we are taking down planes over Eastern Ukraine. Something to consider for the future…
However, Russia must agree to pay the victims compensation by around 2022, i.e. roughly eight years after the incident.
By the way the USS Vincennes was in Iranian territorial waters while firing the missile.
It is sort of surprising that no one had the foresight to redirect the flight over some place that wasn’t a warzone, whether on the political or commercial end.
Why should Russia behave any better than is customary? That’d be cucking.
If countries normally don’t punish the perpetrators, then Russia shouldn’t either. Because there are precedents, and why should you change the law? It’s also against the rule of law. No one should be punished based on ex post facto rules.
Yes, in 2022.
I’m not sure I really buy into the whole people will want to fly internationally on rockets idea, but if it ever happens it will be interesting to see if any are mistakenly intercepted.
The speed alone has got to make the situation more tense. Maybe, they will take more thorough countermeasures to verify a flight ahead of time.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/24/613979423/investigators-say-missile-that-downed-mh17-came-from-russian-military
LDNR should’ve done so.
As was explained at the Dutch inquiry in to why this was so the Dutch intelligence agency said only Ukraine possessed the SAM systems that could take down a commercial jetliner at 30k feet. All the Ukrainian jets downed were around 10k feet.
Sadly Robert Parry is no longer with us, he did some interesting work on it.
Nice of them to have decided to scrutinize images just before the WC. Finally the definitive proof that surely exists and has duly been presented.
Interesting question if GPS for civilian use was inevitable or purely the result of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, or how much it influenced the timeline. In any case, it almost seems certain that on the balance, these shootdowns were actually economically productive, which is kind of odd to think about.
Why “by around 2022”?
US paid compensation for Iran air 655 in 1996, eight years after shooting it down.
I get you: they thought the Ukrainians wouldn’t shoot down a jet coming from the West, and they thought the rebels didn’t have the tech.
Second premise seems slightly negligent based on the timeline and the Crimea, etc.
The US agreed to pay Iran Air Flight 655 victims in 1996, eight years after it happened. So I think there’s a requirement for Russia to pay compensation for citizens of a generally hostile country within eight years of the incident.
America can afford it, Russia not so much.
Russia should not value the citizens from a generally hostile country more than the people of Donbass who will never be compensated for their miserable fates.
Just in case some people are unaware.
It had happened before that Ukrainian Air Force shot down an Russian-Israel passenger plane (from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk) over the Black Sea, in 2001, killing 78 passengers.
They somehow hit it with the S-200 missile system, while they were doing military exercises, initially refusing to admit their responsibility and although paying compensation to family of killed Israelis, for years not paying compensation to family of killed Russian. In addition, refusing to apologize, refusing to prosecute.
This doesn’t imply Kiev also necessarily shot down MH17. But it is a little context of the history that was not known in the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X07EM8fIqLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzAwSE25MS8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ-I0xTLNT8
There’s a certain level of deniability, which was probably not the case with Iran Air. Maybe, Lockerbie would be a better analogue, though it clearly was a terror attack and not a mistake. I mean in this case, we basically have someone saying “Doh!”
The US Navy also shot down TWA Flight 800, not officially though.
Apparently Parry was interviewed about MH17 shortly before his death.
https://www.newcoldwar.org/interview-robert-parry-speaks-mh17-side-ukraine-propaganda-story/
I am still going to need more than Bellingcat style media social media analysis. Dog that hasn’t barked.
However, they paid within three years, so earlier than the Americans in the Iran Air case.
This case was often cited in Hungarian comment threads. I’m unsure about Western Europe, but it’s probably roughly as well known in Hungary as Iran Air Flight 655. That is, most people don’t know much about either, but those interested in such crashes usually know about these.
Indeed. Using the tragedy for propaganda purposes. The Dutch have no respect for their dead.
The West doesn’t care about the thousands of innocent dead Russian civilians in Donbass. There’s no reason why Russians should care about dead westerners.
The latest statement from the investigators is “trust us we know”.
This is laughable. Their previous report was amateurish. Clearly, the Dutch are not interested in establishing what happened.
As I have mentioned before, the easiest way to settle this is via ELINT intercepts of the BUK radars.
There were Orion and a Mercury satellite systems in geostationary orbit which would certainly have captured the the relevant radar emissions, as well as USA-184 in HEO which would very likely have done so. There may also have been airborne and maritime ELINT/ESM systems in range.
Once you have an intercept, it’s a simple matter of finding the associated BUK system in the Electronic Order of Battle database. Was that system Russian, or Ukrainian?
There are good reasons to suppose that it was neither the Russians nor the DNR forces. The latter would not have the training required, and the former would have a functioning EFF.
In the absence of solid evidence, the best candidate is the Ukrainian army (if only on the basis of cui bono?) – with the US being, at least, accomplices after the fact.
Why should they have prosecuted? To my knowledge, military personnel have never been prosecuted for accidentally shooting down an airliner. Apparently the risk of a military shooting down an airliner by mistake is generally considered to be part and parcel of air travel.
You have to think about legal protections for the soldiers: they operate under the knowledge that, unless they commit a war crime (and these kinds of accidents are certainly not considered war crimes), they won’t be prosecuted. Suddenly deciding to prosecute them ex post facto would seriously harm rule of law by punishing someone for something which at the time wasn’t considered a punishable offense. Am I the only one in this comment thread concerned about retroactive criminal punishment for something not considered punishable at the time it was committed?
Air travelers have some special protections in the form of a right for compensation (paid to their surviving relatives), which is I think still $200,000 by traveler (eroded by inflation since it was introduced). On the other hand, the soldiers responsible are generally considered immune to prosecution, at least there’s no precedent of any soldier getting prosecuted for downing a civilian airliner.
I think Russia should agree to pay on behalf of the LDNR, without either the Russian Federation or the LDNR agreeing to accept responsibility or apologizing. They might express their regrets over what happened.
Or better, the LDNR should agree to pay, with de facto Russia picking up the tab, and refusing to acknowledge even the fact that it paid anything.
OT
What about North Korea? Back to square one…
What Russian behaviour?
After Trump cancelled Iran deal, what did you think was going to happen? NK got a clear message that USA can’t be trusted to honor its commitments. Comparing NK to Libya certainly didn’t help.
I for one never though that Kim was desperate to get sanctions relief. He had nothing to lose by agreeing to a summit, but giving up nukes was never an option. And it appears the USA was not going to settle for anything less. So they will just watch as NK develops its nuclear missile program. lol
Denying responsibility, spreading stupid conspiracy theories and refusing to pay compensation…not very impressive by any moral standards.
Admittedly it would probably be foolish to expect anything different from a great power, especially given the ongoing confrontation between Russia and the West.
I’m not invested in the issue though, there was some discussion about it on AK’s blog a few years ago, I’m not really interested in repeating it.
OT
Israeli F-35 news:
https://theaviationist.com/2018/05/22/everything-we-know-and-dont-know-about-israel-launching-worlds-first-air-strikes-using-the-f-35-stealth-aircraft/
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/heres-an-israeli-f-35-just-hanging-out-over-lebanon-no-1826273130
Trump has bought the BS about how smart and tough he was. Bolton deliberately sabotaged with his Libya comment, something Pence then followed up. Having NK unresolved serves the interests of some in the US.
Whereas admission of guilt will not make Russia look guilty. Right.
I personally do not think that the crew manning BUK is to blame here. After all it was a very unusual, “hybrid” deployment. Most likely the crew lacked resources to properly identify a plane, and had to make an educated guess every time. They were also forbidden from using comms.
If anything the fault lies with the person who authorised this “hybrid” strategy, i.e. Putin himself.
I skim watched some of those interviews on the Hebrew show e.g. with the teens who lost their parents – or with the guy at 35 minutes. Difficult to understand tragedy these plane crashes are for dozens or hundreds of people, and what a major crime it was by Ukraine of negligent homicide.
And yet Kiev refuses to take responsibility properly, to fully apologize, to prosecute anyone for the crime – and they simply pay a small amount of money to hope it would go away with the years, as people will forget it. It’s not a wonder if these event would repeat themselves in Ukrainian history.
Maybe, I can’t judge that. In any case, I don’t believe it was intentional, rather a tragic mistake.
Ukraine air defense shot down an airliner by accident during a training exercise back in 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812
I don’t think either side wants to admit that SAA missiles ignore civilian IFF.
I’ve forgotten the details but my take at the time of MH17 was both sides looked like they had something to hide and my guess was Ukraine was using the flight path of commercial liners as a kind of shield for their attack aircraft (i.e. following the same path so AA couldn’t risk accidentally missing the fighter and locking onto the airliner) but the rebel AA was either careless or didn’t have the full set of radar kit (airliner too high?)
so my gut feel at the time was both were half responsible.
That’s what is customary. All countries do that. That’s not a special evil of Ukraine.
By the way Russia is somewhat worse, because it hasn’t even paid yet, and it’s already been four years. Ukraine paid after just three years.
My gut feeling was the same, but of course it’s possible it was the sole responsibility of the Russian/rebel side. I doubt the conspiracy theories about a sole Ukrainian responsibility, but strictly speaking it’s possible as well.
With the exception of LondonBob, it seems that everyone here fully accepts Russian culpability (albeit accidental) for MH17.
Will someone please refresh my memory as to the actual concrete evidence of this?
Here is what I read today, which does not strike me as overwhelmingly convincing:
As LondonBob pointed out, Bob Parry (RIP) of Consortium News debunked much of the major social media evidence (provided by that paragon of objectivity, Bellingcat), while it is not altogether clear, at least to me, that “analysis of parts of the rocket found at the crash scene” would be particularly conclusive in this case.
I would have to admit that the balance of probability may well point towards Russia (or Russian-supplied forces) but is the evidence itself really so overwhelming?
Russia would have probably paid too if the airliner was flying to Israel and so many victims were tied to that important country.
Can’t risk annoying Jerusalem too much.
Are you referring to these?
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/28/troubling-gaps-in-the-new-mh-17-report/
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/29/the-official-and-implausible-mh-17-scenario/
Apparently, you know what really happened to MH17 but I don’t. I can only judge by the openly available information. Here is what I see.
Investigation has not been fair or evenhanded.
Investigation has not been open. For example, why haven’t they released the black box recordings?
The evidence, such as it is, appears to be a variation of “X (in this case, the missile) was Russian-made, therefore russiadunit.”
The official story is as stupid a conspiracy theory as any.
Let me expand a little on the last one. The official narrative goes as follows: Russian government (or “Putin”) smuggled a Buk across the border, fired a missile at a civilian plane for some unfathomable reason, then smuggled the weapon back to Russia. This makes sense in the universe where Putin poisons random nobodies with a military grade nerve agent. In the real world, not so much.
It’s one thing if they said that the plane was shot down by a crew of incompetent LDNR clowns. I could accept that. But that’s not the story. Read the article linked by Reiner (as one example) and try to search for the word accident. You won’t find it. The implication is (and many people come out and say it explicitly) that Russia deliberately murdered the people on the plane. Is Russia immoral for refusing to admit guilt when any such admission will be taken as confessing the mass murder?
Netherlands is more important than Israel (Netherlands – population 17.2 million people).
The difference is that Ukraine shot down the Siberia Airlines Flight 1812. Whereas with MH17 it is not determined whether it was shot down by Ukraine or by separatists (in either case – I believe, of course there must be compensation for the families of the victims).
No, Israel is more important. (Number of nuclear warheads: 200; Netherlands: 0.)
It’s also quite idiotic to ignore the vast and powerful diaspora (most of it very much attached to Israel) in the West (and even in Russia).
Russia did not down that plane. Ukraine, Mossad, or like creature did it, thinking they were attacking Putin’s aircraft. But takers and users don’t care about the truth. Pray for Christ’s return and the destruction of all evil by the second death.
Well, that’s what I believe, claims that Russia would deliberately have its proxies shoot down a passenger aircraft are indeed hardly credible.
Anyway, this discussion is somewhat pointless, since under present political conditions Russia, understandably enough, won’t admit responsibility. And apart from the Dutch and the relatives of those killed, I don’t even think that many people care at this point.
i wouldn’t say culpability exactly – i assume the Kremlin supplied the Buk (or allowed it to be supplied) for air defense but if someone fires it at a legitimate target but it misses and locks on to an airliner then who’s mostly at fault?
i’d say the people who let an airliner fly over a war zone.
I just came up with a non-conspiracy “Ukraine did it” explanation. Basically, due to some f…up, they mixed up east and west (or something similar happened), and thought it was a Russian (military?) plane. The only assumption I’m making is that they were poorly trained and perhaps tired or under stress, but frustrated and eager to shoot (from a distance) at supposed enemy targets. Which is probably true of many or even most Ukrainian troops at the time.
The fact that some Russian yahoos admitted to shooting down the plane on social media sites and then later these comments being removed says a lot. I mean, why brag about something like this (they thought that they had hit a Ukrainian plane) so soon after it happened, if you weren’t responsible?
And then there’s video showing the Buk missile launcher crossing over back to Russian territory:
https://youtu.be/P2JUvZP5cfA
The cause of the Vincennes incident was a “cold” crew and ship transfer. The Vincennes replaced another ship. The earlier ship should have posted one or more of its radar surveillance officers on the Vincennes to provide it with corporate knowledge on air traffic in the region to avoid having to learn it all over again.
The Iranian airliner shot down was a routine civilian flight. This profile and ID were known to the earlier ship and its crew. The profile and ID were not known to the Vincennes and its crew. The Vincennes shot it down in a panic of bad judgment due to a complete lack of situational awareness.
The shootdown was an accident … accountable to what should have been career-ending bad judgment on the part of senior officers of the two ships doing a turnover as well as the headquarters staff planning the turnover.
I haven’t read anything about anyone being held accountable … just some dribble about it being the Iranians fault for using a military rather than civilian IFF/SIF mode (false). The United States agreed to pay Iran US$61.8 million on an ex gratia (a goodwill/no fault) basis.
Provided not the sharpest brains operated those social media accounts, they could just have received the first unconfirmed news story about a plane being shot down, assumed it was a Ukrainian plane, and just to be the first to report it (how many media organizations do things like that? such social media propaganda accounts count as media organizations), they simply announced that “another Ukrainian plane was downed by us.”
I doubt there’s anything to explain here, either way.
There were Orion and a Mercury satellite systems in geostationary orbit which would certainly have captured the the relevant radar emissions
That’s 30’000km away and you have the whole disk of the Earth to filter through. Not optically, but in radio frequencies. This doesn’t sound very likely to be possible.
AFAIK it was never established where this video was taken exactly? Bellingcat at some time pretended to know, but it didn’t really fit.
The US isn’t controlled by Dutchmen though
The Americans are hypocrites of course,
Stop taking everything that Randal writes as the Gospel.
Well, the insurgents shot down an Antonov with a Buk two days before shooting down MH17. However, why they thought a plane at 30,000 ft was part of any war effort is part of their incompetence. It is normal practice for civilian airliners to fly (high) over 3rd worldish war zones.
There were a number of others as well, including:
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/16/the-ever-curiouser-mh-17-case/
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/21/kerry-pressed-for-mh-17-evidence/
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/19/fraud-alleged-in-nyts-mh-17-report/
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/17/mh-17-two-years-of-anti-russian-propaganda/
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/22/will-nyt-retract-latest-anti-russian-fraud/
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/28/troubling-gaps-in-the-new-mh-17-report/
The Americans (shorthand for the American federal government and its foreign policy elite) blame Russia for something which both they and their Ukrainian allies had committed in the not too distant past without ever apologizing for it. How’s that not hypocritical, Randal or not Randal?
They have high gain antennas, enhanced by synthetic aperture. ELINT and SIGINT are core functions of these systems.
They used a MANPAD to down the Antonov.
The shootdown was an accident … accountable to what should have been career-ending bad judgment on the part of senior officers
I haven’t read anything about anyone being held accountable
Not too surprising that you haven’t read anything about anyone being held accountable.
Not exactly career ending, it appears.
Well, the insurgents shot down an Antonov with a Buk [sic] ctwo days before shooting down MH17
Don’t think so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z7BCUEWQCg
I received a letter the other day from Global USA, as the stamp diplomatically informed me:
https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2016/images/pr16_008.jpg
US policy is hypocritical, never more so than today. Trump and his clown administration don’t even pretend anymore that there are universally binding standards, it’s one law for the US (inherently good, always in the right, bound by no international treaties, but forcing its own laws and policies on everyone else) and its special friends (Israel, Saudi-Arabia), another for everyone else. That’s not a view the rest of the world should have any respect for.
If Russia is supposed to pay the debts of the LDNR, then the LDNR should also become part of Russia. Symmetry.
Then how come Kiev’s shooting down of a plane with mainly Israelis onboard was hardly even known or reported in the West, let alone with any anger or pressure on Ukraine from the West?
Sometimes these conspiracy theorists (I know we get a lot because the other content on Unz) seem very out of touch with basic reality. There’s almost no reporting of Ukraine’s shooting down of the plane in English.
I don’t think American Jews – who have some disproportionate influence in America, but do not control it – were even aware. or reporting, let alone angry about (I can find zero evidence of their caring), when Ukraine had shot down Siberia Airlines Flight 1812.
In fact, most Americans do not even know this history, even the people who are paid to report on MH17 only 13 years later (that the same incident had repeated by Ukraine 13 years earlier is not mentioned, and will only be reported on Russian and Israeli television – while the rest of the world forgets even if it was ever aware).
In Hungary it definitely made headlines back then. But obviously everyone understood it was an accident. There was no animus against Ukraine at the time, so there were no special interests intent on making a big deal out of it.
The big difference with MH17 is not the identity of the victims, but the (probable) perpetrators. The Russians had already been the object of a hate campaign, and it was very convenient to further the propaganda. That’s why you keep hearing about the case.
Another difference is that once the facts became clear, there was no more reason for the Ukrainians to deny the obvious. Keeping to deny it would actually have been worse PR than simply paying up. (As usual, without acknowledging guilt.) It was embarrassing, but nothing more. Not even very expensive.
In the case of the MH17 Russia would have to admit having supplied the rebels with weapons and perhaps more, so they just cannot admit it. Though I think they could still pay using the usual formulas, maybe in the name of the rebels.
It’s irrelevant if the passengers are from West or East. Everyone deserves a safe passage. And with this kind of disaster, of course family of victims deserve compensation, and perpetrators punishment – after an objective, non-political investigation.
Because it would fatally undermine the propaganda.
And of course the Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 was well reported back then, but most people who are not aviation catastrophe nerds tend to forget it. (My mom remembered it in 2014, over a decade later, though.) And there was no ongoing propaganda campaign against Ukraine, unlike now that there is an ongoing propaganda campaign against Russia.
I think that this would be the right moment for the masterful American diplomacy to cross-reference Libya again, this time in regard to the downing of flight Pan Am 103. Offer the Russians restoration of full diplomatic relations plus cancellation of sanctions by the west, even though Russia didn’t do anything wrong. In return Russia compensates the victims to the tune of 10 million per person – Lockerbie style and then the west will look into the possibility of providing an involuntary colonoscopy for Putin – Gaddafi style.
Ukraine shut down the criminal case, refuses to prosecute perpetrators, refuses to acknowledge guilt, and refused to compensate the airline,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghLJQoKpgd4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YLsvJdu0Jk
Skimming the comments I see some who refer to anything other than the official Dutch/Western theory as a “conspiracy theory”.
My beef is not whether the Dutch/Western theory is right or wrong, plausible/implausible as people just using “conspiracy theory” to refer to what they presumably mean as “implausible theory” without reflection because by strict definition even the Dutch/Western theory is a “conspiracy theory”.
The term “conspiracy theory” really came into prominence after the JFK assassination when the big question was whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone (the lone-gunman theory) or was part of (or framed by) a conspiracy – a coordination by various actors to execute or cover up an illegal act – by the Mafia/CIA/Cuba/Soviets etc.
So anyone who didn’t believe the official Warren commission report proclaiming LHO was the sole culprit acting alone was a “conspiracy theorist”. This term then morphed into it a term referring to loonies who imagined people conspiring with each other for any event (the RFK/MLK assassinations etc etc).
However in strict terms, every major act in the past few years has been ascribed in the mainstream to a conspiracy by definition. 9/11 is alleged in the mainstream to have been a conspiracy involving 19/20 hijackers, some handlers, OBL. Now I happen to believe this “mainstream conspiracy theory” as I think this is more plausible than “alternative conspiracy theories” which have the US Gov directly involved. (There are some interesting additional theories to the “mainstream conspiracy theory” as to whether Saudi Royals directly or indirectly helped, or whether the Israelis knew and didn’t say anything etc etc)
The point is: the mainstream MH17 theory is by definition a conspiracy theory involving not a single lone actor but multiple actors/agencies in Russia and DNR who conspired to effect an illegal act and/or cover it up.
Against this, others allege that there was a conspiracy alright but it was with the Ukrainians and the various Western agencies.
So the debate should not be on which one is a “conspiracy theory” – they BOTH by definition are – but which is more plausible on a case by case basis.
In the mainstream world, any conspiracy that involves Russians must ipso facto be true because apparently all Russians are secretive and coordinate moves with each other and controlled by that evil Sith Lord in the Kremlin while any conspiracy that involves the West cannot be true because no people in the West ever conspire to effect illegal acts because they are too good, pure and innocent to ever do so or pull it off.
That’s why conspiracy theories involving Russians are simply called “facts” and those that involve the West are called “conspiracy theories” in a pejorative sense.
Are you in write-only mode? Most of these are true of the USA vs. Iran. Except they paid for the airplane itself.
Why are you bringing up points which have already been addressed? (E.g. not apologizing – neither did the US in the Iran Air 665 case.)
that’s why the Siberian air lines plane may be relevant – the missile that took it down was supposedly fired at a decoy during a training exercise but missed and then locked on to the airliner.
i don’t know if that is true but if it is then maybe the same thing happened with MH17 i.e. a missile was fired at a Ukraine jet on the same flight path as the airliner but it missed and locked on to the larger plane?
Trump and his clown administration don’t even pretend anymore that there are universally binding standards
Isn’t this honesty, the way it really is.
I don’t think American Jews – who have some disproportionate influence in America,
LOL
My apology if required, RT. Did we have an official position or statement on this?
It’s bizarre though if one claims at the same time to defend the rules-based world order. Also very dangerous since other actors eventually might not accept any rules anymore either (e.g. US erosion of the taboo against preventive war…would you want other great powers to adopt that?).
But I think you know that since this was discussed here often before, and expressed by reiner tor and others far more eloquently than I could.
Why not just accept that the ‘not sharpest brains’ belonged to insurgents who thought that they had succeeded in shooting down a Ukrainian military plane, felt elated and bragged about it within social media accounts, then after finding out their huge error in actually shooting down a foreign passenger plane, had their statements quickly redacted? Why look for ‘false flags’ and other conspiracy theory answers when the most likely scenario is what appears right in front of your eyes?
the rules-based world order.
You are appealing to an ideal. Something that does not exist.
To fully follow the American example, vilify the dead passengers and their next of kin.
So drop the pretence of caring about such ideals. Even if you don’t mind America acting hypocritically this attitude will come back to haunt you eventually.
Do you think other countries will have any qualms mistreating you once America loses its great power status? You should be prepared to be kicked around and treated just as hypocritically once you have fallen from your pedestal as America currently treats any country that isn’t its ‘special friend’.
America is playing a dangerous game and eventually she will pay the price.
American foreign policy rhetoric is 99% of it dildo moralism (essential rightness, my hat.)
This is all the more schizo as moral language has been banned practically from everywhere else (such as explaining crime.)
Sorry Anatoly when Bellingcrap’s Aric Toler gleefully tweets out that the JIT confirmed the BUK missile which shot down MH17 was manufactured in 1986 in the USSR, that screams the Ukrops did it to me. A country which shot down a civil airliner and tried to lie about it for weeks in 2001 led by oligarchs and idiots who insist the Maidan snipers all got away like OJ’s real killers is more than capable of blowing an airliner out of the sky itself via incompetence or much more likely, false flag.
Sorry chum I will need evidence that isn’t social media evidence. As reiner tor has pointed out it would be natural on hearing of a plane being shot down to assume it were the rebels, and even for them to brag about it.
No, that’s bullshit. The speed and altitude of a civilian airliner is so completely unlike a military plane that there’s no way you could confuse them.
Typical of Karlin and his 5th column tendencies…wants to promote Russia “betraying” Donbass, wants to not promote that the DNR 100% didn’t shoot it down
In a make-believe word where DNR did this, then surely Russia and VVP would deserve considerable credit for protecting DNR, diplomatically,politically,military and economic despite the massive cost doing so has done for Russia on all these 4 fields? …remember all these dumb, scumbag Ukrop nationalists, liberasts and western media were thinking this would give Putin an “out-ramp” from which he could diassociate himself from the “problematic” rebels and Donbass and get back to business relations with the west because of ‘Russian elite bla bla bla shopping bla bla bla?
They didn’t ,because Russian state and VVP are good, clever and morally courageous
But obviously the contradiction between talk of “betrayal” whilst at same time claiming the rebels did this, is lost on Anatoly
I personally think that by far the most likely explanation is that it was the rebels or Russians, accidentally shooting it down. It doesn’t mean that it’s conclusively proven.
There could be mitigating circumstances (for the Russians) which partially implicate the Ukrainians, for example if Ukrainian warplanes were close to the scene, which might have been the original targets, but either due to error the civilian airliner was targeted, or a warplane was targeted but it escaped and the missile just homed in on the nearest target, the civilian airliner.
If such circumstances were present, I’m sure the Ukrainians would be able to suppress them, because they are the ones leading the investigation, and the investigators are probably under severe pressure to implicate Russia and not to push too hard on any possible Ukrainian angle.
Then there’s still the possibility of it having been the Ukrainians – somehow believing it to be a Russian plane. In my opinion it’s not very likely, but who knows?
I didn’t think you could get and more dumb…I was wrong
That nonsense video has been comprehensively disproved many times. A reminder that the SBU has provided numerous fake audio intercepts of the rebels and Kremlin officials regarding MH17 that have been proven to be fake…what’s more these fakes directly contradict the lies in this Dutch report…the one that Ukraine is supposed to be a consituent party of !
Also another reminder you cretin, that officially the Ukrainian “Intelligence” position is that this was an intended false flag attack on an Aeroflot plane orchestrated by Russia so as to give them a pretext for the invasion that the Ukro-Nazi’s had been warning about with particular intensity before MH17. As far as I know they have never retracted this theory/accusation
A reminder that Ukraine is an irrelevant prostitute state that can get away with any lie they want
Kind of like you spewing out lie after lie here at this website. Terrible!! 🙁
Just watched the Dutch video. The serial number on the nozzle differs from the serial number on the body of the rocket motor. Can’t happen in a single missile.
IMO this clearly brings into question the chain of custody of the fragments.
Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, Karlin is right.
If Russia did it, it must fess up and pay up.
But the West must be made to fess up for recruiting crypto-nazi elements for pulling off a coup and provoking a war in Ukraine that killed scores of people.
What Russia did was terrible but accidental, collateral damage to war provoked by the Neoconned West.
scribbles 5,000 words on obscure alt media webzine that no-one will read
I think even influential people sneak looks at Alt Media for what is REALLY going on.
I mean who trusts Newsweek or Time? It’s like reading Pravda in old USSR.
I think that there could be a different kind of logic at play here. The reason why the west insists that the Russians should be held accountable for shooting down MH17 is because they believe that their ersatz allies – the Ukrainians are too stupid to do it.
And who can blame them for that kind of reasoning. After all the Ukros were duped into staging a coup and Somaliazing their country supposedly to bring superior democracy to the one they had before.
Do they look like people smart enough to shoot down a plane? The only reason they managed to shoot down Siberian Airlines flight 1812 was because they weren’t shooting at it – which means they hit it completely by accident, if they were to deliberately target it – they would have missed it, because they are too stupid for such a complex task.
FYI. Cyrano is a Bulgarian or Macedonian.
Here average IQs of Slavic countries, according to Richard Lynn:
https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country
Poland 99
Czech Republic 98
Russia 97
Belarus 97
Ukraine 97
Slovakia 96
Here are Balkan average IQs:
Bulgaria 93
Macedonia 91
Becker:
http://viewoniq.org/?page_id=9:
Russia 95.3
Ukraine 92.4
Bulgaria 90.2
Performance on TIMMS (pg. 42):
https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2011/downloads/T11_IR_M_Chapter1.pdf
Russia – 539
Ukraine – 479
Armenia – 467
Romania – 458
Georgia – 431
Macedonia – 426
PISA scores:
https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-include-america.html
Poland 521
Russia 481
Hispanic Americans 465
Serbs 447
Bulgaria 440
African Americans 434
Bulgarians closer to African Americans than to Mexican-Americans.
This is what I get for trying to exonerate you for MH17? I am just trying to help you by providing a highly plausible explanation why Ukrainians should be given a benefit of a doubt regarding the shot down plane.
Because of their severe developmental challenges, they should be excluded from suspicion. You can rant all you want about the supposed high IQ of Ukros, there is zero evidence of that. You are the poorest Slavic country by a wide margin, and as stupid as you are, somehow you must have found a way to cheat on those IQ exams, or it could be country wide conspiracy to conceal the real results because they would be too embarrassing for you as a nation.
You’re the one who should be blushing at the IQ results for those of Bulgarian or Macedonian descent.
It’s obvious that these nationalities did not conceal their results or were involved in any ‘conspiracies to conceal’ anything! 🙂
How about this: When Russia starts running Nord Stream 2, and when you stupid dogs starve to death, don’t beg Europe and US to force Russia to provide revenues for you by transporting gas through Ukraine. Tell them that you have high IQ and that you can live off your high IQ’s alone. You stupid monkey.
Ukrainians ‘starving to death’ in their own country, not run by Moscow? It’s obvious that you’ve never been to Ukraine and don’t really know Ukrainians. Incredible!
Not according to Girkin.
Ukraine didn’t inform the international civil aviation agency body to keep airplanes out of its recognized airspace – on account of the warlike situation involving the Kiev regime. It’s understood that nations have the responsibility to inform when their recognized airspace isn’t safe.
Prior to and after the tragic shoot down, several airlines took it upon themselves to not fly over Donbass.
Chubsy ubsy gets a propping:
https://www.rferl.org/a/netherlands-australia-to-hold-russia-legally-responsible-for-shooting-down-mh17/29250256.html
He’s quite an operator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJZjJAtKeWI
It was at lowish altitude. The Ukranians’s said it was hit by two MANPADS :
http://news.liga.net/incidents/news/samolet_nad_slavyanskom_terroristy_podbili_iz_pzrk_seleznev
And there was video footage:
https://theaviationist.com/2014/06/06/an-30-shot-down-by-manpads/
If Strelkov claimed otherwise, he was probably just trying to deter Ukrainian avaiation operating over the DNR.
Every time you mention stupid, Cyrano, you will be reminded of the results of multiple sets of data and where your people stand relative to to other peoples. 🙂
Here average IQs of Slavic countries, according to Richard Lynn:
https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country
Poland 99
Czech Republic 98
Russia 97
Belarus 97
Ukraine 97
Slovakia 96
Here are Balkan average IQs:
Bulgaria 93
Macedonia 91
Becker:
http://viewoniq.org/?page_id=9:
Russia 95.3
Ukraine 92.4
Bulgaria 90.2
Performance on TIMMS (pg. 42):
https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2011/downloads/T11_IR_M_Chapter1.pdf
Russia – 539
Ukraine – 479
Armenia – 467
Romania – 458
Georgia – 431
Macedonia – 426
PISA scores:
https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-include-america.html
Poland 521
Russia 481
Hispanic Americans 465
Serbs 447
Bulgaria 440
African Americans 434
Bulgarians closer to African Americans than to Mexican-Americans.
Well, there was something in my morning newspapers about a new Dutch MH17 report blaming the Russian military, so I thought i’d take a look at this thread. Offhand, it looks like about 80% of the commenters here believe this conclusion.
I don’t read Dutch, I haven’t bothered looking at this report, and I don’t claim to know what really happened. But I’d say that anyone who accepts this finding at face value is just making himself look totally ridiculous. Indeed, since several very prominent people whom I know say they’ve looked into the matter and think it’s pretty likely that Kiev was responsible, I’d lean that way myself. I’d rate their opinion far weightier than that of NPR or the Dutch government.
Presumably, most people here also believe that the Russians stole the election for Donald Trump and that Putin poisoned the Skirpals.
However, this incident leads into a much broader and more interesting ideological question. Over the last decade or so, I’ve noticed that there’s a bizarre divide between two marginalized groups, namely the “Racialist Right” and the “Conspiratorial (mostly) Left.” Each of these communities is demonized by the MSM, shunned by respectable elements of their own ideological wing, and increasingly censored on social media. Yet although they each ridicule the total dishonesty of the MSM on their own issues, they generally seem terrified of being linked to the unorthodox views of the other faction. Perhaps they feel they’ve exhausted their deviationist quota on their own issues, and any further deviationism would see them packed off to the loony-bin.
Since I’d guess that the vast majority of the commenters on this thread are (hardcore or software) “racialists,” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they instantly accept whatever the government and the media tells them about anything else. The government/media is absolutely 100% totally dishonest about racial issues, so naturally you can trust every single word they say about everything else. Makes perfect sense…
I remember back a few months ago I was telling Steve Pinker how odd I find this whole “Red Pill” issue that everyone talks about. Probably 95% of the huge number of people who say they’ve been “Red Pilled” are referring to race. But my own views on racial issues haven’t really changed significantly since I was nine or ten years old, and as far as I can see I’ve been almost entirely correct on just about all those very controversial matters throughout all the decades since then, even though most of that time I’ve been in sharp disagreement with the bulk of both the Left and the Right. I can look at some of my writings from 30-odd years ago, and I probably wouldn’t change a single word today.
But on “conspiratorial matters,” oh how utterly, utterly blind I was, and my “Red-Pilling” over the last 15-odd years has been absolutely mind-blowing. Compared to so many of these gigantic revelations, the question of whether Kiev or Moscow shot down MH17 is so totally insignificant I just can’t take the interest to bother investigating it myself. But when you’ve become reasonably convinced that on so many dozens and dozens of gigantic issues, the official narrative is completely false—or indeed upside down—then you naturally tend to be very doubtful when some Dutch officials say “Putin Dunnit!”
Probably most of you have already seen it, but for those you haven’t I discuss a few of these matters in my American Pravda article and the series which followed:
http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/
http://www.unz.com/author/ron-unz/topic/american-pravda/
At very long last, I think I’m finally now on the verge of being back to go back to writing again, and I hope to expand on these important topics further in the near future.
Think of me as a prosecutor. I am accusing the Ukrainians of being stupid. Your defense can not be that the prosecutor is stupid – I am not the object of this legal procedure – you are. Your IQ claims are nothing but hearsay. Do you have any alibi that for the time period during which I accuse you of committing stupidity, (your entire history) – that you’ve been observed by an independent witness doing something smart? Remember, you can always plead insanity – it’s better than being stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tldGgGFe194
Stupid person claims he is a prosecutor, because he is stupid. His stupidity is proven. His status of prosecutor is not.
Would you mind listing these people?
Would you mind listing these people?
Obviously he is not going to list them, what people said to him was clearly in confidence — very few “prominent people” will willingly go on the record as “useful idiots” of the Kremlin.
What would be far more interesting, would be for Ron Unz to look in more depth at this issue himself, or to commission a “serious” writer/investigator to do so.
http://armamentresearch.com/Uploads/Research%20Report%20No.%203%20-%20Raising%20Red%20Flags.pdf
Quite a few were shotdown around 10k feet which is beyind the capabilities of MANPADS, but the rebels had documented access to medium range SAM systems. See page 75.
Again I am at a loss as to why the Russians would supply a BUK system give it is very bulkly, lacks deniability and was not needed.
That’s fine, I just don’t trust Sherlock’s ability to impartially examine all factors that much when he’s one of just three suspects who could physically commit the crime. I mean, he’d do that for sure if he didn’t commit it, but that’s begging the question.
Well yes, that’s my position. I did after all list the Ukrainian false flag variant as “woke”, not “joke”.
And in my old article I speculated on a median possibility: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/mh17/
But, at the end of the day, I:
Do not have any privileged information.
Consequently, trying to “investigate” this myself would produce more smoke than light, and be entirely counterproductive anyway. Indeed, what’s the point, when even the standard narrative (that a Russia supplied Buk shot down MH17, and that Russia refuses to accept responsibility for it) is entirely in line with what both the US and the Ukraine have done in the past?
I don’t really have much of an opinion on the whole matter but if we decide that the appropriate thing to do is to assign blame shouldn’t at least some of it go to the people who caused the airplane to fly over an active warzone in the first place?
I assume they had written something…
But woke is joke.
There are many explanations, I find #1-6 and maybe #8 at least somewhat plausible. Probably I left out some. It all comes down to a combination of rebels/Russians/Ukrainians, but mostly the first two.
1) Russians incompetently shot down a civilian airliner by a Buk illegally inside Ukraine
2) Rebels incompetently shot down a civilian airliner by a Buk illegally supplied to them by Russia
3) Rebels incompetently shot down a civilian airliner by a Buk they captured from the Ukrainian armed forces
4) Russians shot down a civilian airliner by a Buk illegally inside Ukraine, but they were aiming at a Ukrainian plane which got away, and the missile then homed in on the civilian airliner (a little muddier than #1)
5) Rebels shot down a civilian airliner by a Buk illegally supplied to them by Russia, but they were aiming at a Ukrainian plane which got away, and the missile then homed in on the civilian airliner (a little muddier than #2)
6) Rebels shot down a civilian airliner by a Buk they captured from the Ukrainian armed forces, but they were aiming at a Ukrainian plane which got away, and the missile then homed in on the civilian airliner (a little muddier than #3)
7) Rebels shot it down in the belief that it was a Russian plane as a false flag (i.e. as if it was Ukraine), hoping to draw Russia more directly into the conflict.
8) Russians (or rebels on Putin’s orders) shot it down (but they wanted to down a Russian plane and mixed it up) to create a pretext for Russia to intervene.
9) Ukrainian air defense unit somehow thought that Russia was finally openly attacking them (there had been a lot of accusations about artillery or air defense etc. shooting across the border), and that it was a Russian plane
10) Rogue Ukrainian air defense unit somehow thought that it was a plane of President Putin (or some other Russian plane)
11) Ukrainian air defense command somehow thought that it was a plane of President Putin (or some other Russian plane) and ordered the Buk to shoot it down
12) Rogue Ukrainian air defense unit wanted just punish Russia by downing a Russian plane, but mixed it up
Probably we’d need to create a multi-dimensional matrix of the various variables (who shot it down, was it aiming at something else which got away, etc.)
I don’t disagree with your post.
I had thought that it was the rebels who shot it down by mistake; I was surprised by the Dutch finding that it was a Russian crew. But that is not impossible – as others have pointed out, the Americans shot down an Iranian plane by mistake; why couldn’t a Russian crew make such a mistake too?
This is the most likely scenario. The other possibilities are less likely.
Ukrainian false flag (deliberately shot down by Ukrainian jet or missile)? Yeah, the Ukrainians were really so competent in 2014 that they could have pulled it off so effectively that there was no real evidence for it, and Ukraine which in 2014 was riddled with Russian spies managed to keep it a secret and no defectors were able to supply definitive evidence. And the West was really willing to go along and sacrifice hundreds of its own people for such a cause.
Ukraine shot it down by mistake? Its enemies weren’t flying planes over Ukraine, plus this plane wasn’t entering Ukraine from Russian territory but exiting Ukraine. Also unlikely.
An then you have the fact that the Russian side was spreading fake news, like the alleged Spanish air traffic controller who got caught here:
https://www.rferl.org/a/catch-carlos-if-you-can-mh17-russia-ukraine/29065244.html
(people will object to the carrier of this news – well, what about the facts presented?)
Whose fake claims were featured in conspiracy theory articles like this one:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/spanish-air-controller-kiev-borispol-airport-ukraine-military-shot-down-boeing-mh17/5391888
:::::::::::::::::::
If Russia had evidence of a genuine Ukrainian false flag operation or culpability, why cling to these fake stories? The fact that they resorted to the fake stories suggests that there was no plausible “real” one, such as a Ukrainian jet using the civilian plane for cover or something along those lines; if you’re going to make a fake story you might as well go for the one that makes Ukraine look the worst.
I don’t seriously believe it’s likely or even possible. I think the most likely explanation is that it was either the rebels or a Russian crew.
I don’t really think a Ukrainian plane used it for cover, I think it was a slightly different version. Just check Siberian Airlines Flight 1812: they shot it down unintentionally, because the missile homed in on the airliner (flying far away) instead of the decoy (which was closer, by the way). Here it might also have been unintentional: a Ukrainian plane simply fled the missile, maybe used a decoy or something, but for some unlucky coincidence the missile decided to home in on MH17, which just happened to be there close, both the Ukrainian pilot (sorry if I’ll expect him to be incompetent) and the air defense crew being oblivious to its presence.
Russia cannot really spread this story, because it strictly denies its presence (or supply of weapons) in Ukraine, and I don’t think these Buks have lots of logs, so probably their only evidence is what the crew said. For obvious reasons they cannot really use this line of evidence. So Russia instead tried to spread stupid conspiracy theories, and in an amateurish manner.
Now I can believe that there might have been a Ukrainian plane (I don’t think it’s the most likely explanation, a more parsimonious explanation is simply that it was an accident without any Ukrainian warplanes present, so until further evidence I’d go with that), and I can also believe that it’s somehow covered up, probably with some Western complicity. Since it doesn’t really make Ukraine more responsible (after all, it was not them; they didn’t supply the Buk; they were unaware of the Buk’s presence), but it make Russia look less bad (they shot at a Ukrainian warplane, and by some bad luck managed to hit the civilian airliner which just happened to be there), so I can easily imagine the Netherlands letting them off the hook here.
Again, just to repeat, I don’t find it the most likely explanation. But it’s not totally impossible, and I don’t like the fact that Ukraine led the investigation. It was basically an investigation led by one of the prime suspects. (Admittedly, one of the least likely suspects, but still.)
All that matters is how you see yourselves. It doesn’t matter that the whole world thinks that you are morons, you keep posting some phony figures about alleged Ukro “intelligence”. That’s all you got to console yourself.
Well, perhaps. But the case seemed laced with total ridicule:
The problem is that exactly the same denigrating description could probably be applied to the vast majority of “racialist” claims and theories over the last few decades. So presumably the notion that e.g. “race exists” is equally absurd and ridiculous.
Well, some racialist claims and theories really do deserve the ridicule, as you have yourself done in your work to rehabilitate Latinos on crime. 🙂
Others don’t – but then, they are published in serious journals and books as well, so the comparison doesn’t really hold.
My long-standing assessment is that at most the Russian rebel or Russian military-operated Buk honed in accidentally onto the wrong aircraft, due to either intentional or unintentional Ukrainian action. More likely, though, it really was a case perfectly explainable by Occam's Razor – an inexperienced crew screwing up (Buks are complicated). Meanwhile, most of the conspiracy theories spread by Russia – recall Carlos the Spanish air traffic controller? – were indeed stupid and amateurish.
Example of an actually serious conspiracy theory that also concerns the Ukraine – the Euromaidan massacre in 2013 that was the immediate prelude to Yanukovych's overthrow was actually a false flag. Being actually serious and plausible, there is even published academic literature making that case: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2658245
And yet Russian propaganda has barely touched Snipergate, despite it being an order of magnitude or two more convincing (and damning). Instead, it chose to focus its propaganda resources on a panoply of random conspiracy theories about MH17, each more ridiculous than the last (here is a sample: it was a Ukraine operated Buk, perhaps in a failed attempt to shoot down Putin’s plane; Carlos the air traffic controller; Ukrainian Su-25 taking down down MH17 from behind; Israeli-made air-to-air missile may have downed MH17 (RT!!!); the CIA placing a bomb).
In my opinion, not treating this with some degree of ridicule is a disservice to genuine attempts to expose skullduggery, and to Russian taxpayers who ultimately finance this incompetent propaganda, which is negative value added so far as Russia’s credibility and soft power are concerned.
Skimmed through the comments.
As I’ve written before, several times, agree up to a point.
Now…..background: I am an ex-military but not a specialist in that area. Say, those specialists were covering my arse from the danger above. As a part of understanding all that I did have, once upon a time, a couple of brief courses about that particular weapon system given by people very good in that. We even walked around the systems, peeked into internals, were given demonstrations, the works. Even tried to memorize all that data to pass the mark. The usual.Or so I say.
So, I guess that gives me some better insight than the most of posters here.
Long story short, I wouldn’t say “Buks are complicated”.
What happened here is simple: a hastily assembled crew, who knows with what level of training/expertise before, was sent into real high level conventional war.
Several days of high stress, lack of sleep, shitty food…the war. Exhaustion, fog of war and the understandable error. An error, a mistake all combatants make all the time.
All….the…time…..
I’ve never, so far, seen those factors in all these analysis. All written and regurgitated by civilians in air conditioned corporate rooms.
The reality of combat is…whatever.
Analogy: put a top shot from Olympics in real combat zone and you’ll see how he can make an error in just loading his rifle, let alone being that accurate.
I, personally, had hallucinations after 3 days of action, without sleep. Just occasional, brief,”films” every now and then. I was able to sleep walking on marches. Sounds crazy?
I wonder how many …ahm…experts discussing all this have had such experiences.
For high tech crews, they can miss alarms sounds, misrepresent clear commands, read consoles wrong….all of the shit that happens to overstretched and exhausted men in real war.
Apologize for a bit of a rant, but, yes, that does piss me off a bit sometimes.
So, personally, yes, I really think that Kremlin, again, fucked up the PR. The level of ineptitude was , and still is, staggering.
I also do not get why they do not say:
The crew were volunteers from Russia proper which got there on their own, just wanting to help their kin. Tick.
The error in judgement was made. Error. Tick.
The error was made because “all that I wrote above”, stress, exhaustion. Fog of war. Tick.
We believe the responsible party was “flight control/company management”. Tick.
I really don’t get why Kremlin didn’t do just that.
Had the crew been admitted to be Russian, they would have to admit that the weapon also came from Russia. They cannot do that.
This why the theory that a Ukrainian crew did it in a Ukrainian Buk is not completely impossible.
Those days there were lots of stories from official Ukrainian sources about direct Russian intervention, artillery shooting across the border, air defense downing Ukrainian planes from across the border, etc. I don’t know how true those stories were, but I see no reason why a Ukrainian air defense crew wouldn’t believe them.
So you have a Ukrainian air defense crew believing in a direct Russian intervention, and they can see an airplane coming from the direction of Russia, and for whatever reason they believe it to be a Russian military plane.
Except it’s not a military plane, and is traveling the opposite direction, but they just mix it up. So they destroy it.
Not the most likely explanation, but not impossible.
No.
Those weapon systems could’ve been there. Not saying they were, but they could have been. That was the common system in ALL countries supplied by USSR (did I just say that….imagine AK-47). Hell, some of those were captured and were used, for intel/training purposes in West.
And, even that, why not?
Why…..the…….fuck……….not?
Why Kremlin is so stupidly reluctant to say “fuck you, we are the player as well”?
Why all that stupid hiding, lying…couldn’t work, didn’t work, will not work…ever.
“Yes…it was the Regiment OneTwoThree from “place in Russia”. We sent it there to protect our interests. We’ll do it again if necessary, and more”.
Any serious player would’ve done that.
Look at the Israelis (not even Americans, they really don’t give a shit). Look at bloody Turks.
Those “green men”. I mean, imagine somebody trying to pull similar shit close to USA. You think that Americans would send the ’82 and not admitting it’s them?
Kremlin has simply been stupid and that stupidity is coming straight back into their face.
As deserved.
You appear to over complicate things. Nothing wrong with that.
I like to keep it simple. Combat is complicated enough without any additions.
Firstly, this was the real war. Not a police action against a midget but a full fledged conventional war against equal opponent.
The last time West did it was in Falkands. And it was Brits…..
Israelis did similar….
Americans haven’t done something like that since Korea (not Vietnam…Korea).
Next.
The personal experience of that unit can’t be compared with anything in West since Falkands war. And even that wasn’t on the same level.
Brits deployed the best of their own, fully manned units (well, at least the Navy and Marines…let’s leave the Army Brigade out of it..anyway..) and had weeks to perfect their fitness, teamwork, craft…equipment. Fully integrated British force was deployed in hostile area there.
This crew went through something, well, I’d say only top level SF guys do once in a lifetime.
I don’t want to type that here but I am positive I have a very clear picture how it all looked like from the first info about the …conflict…..to the actual shooting. Pure hell……
They made a mistake, simply as that. Perfectly understandable and NOT important mistake. Their mistake was much less than:
Kremlin mistake in all that…affair….since then to now as we speak.
Civilian flight authorities.
Airplane company authorities.
Airplane crew.
If somebody has to pay for that shooting down I’d start down that list, in that order. Without the KUB crew, of course. Maybe the Regiment commander and up to the chain.
In war shit happens. People die. Including civilians. Unborn babies. Facts.
This…exercise…has nothing to do with the facts, though.
It’s a …peculiar…..exercise in human nature, applied psychology and …just funny actually.
If you read my comments up there, I think the simplest theory has the most overwhelming likelihood. I just mentioned something which was a possibility, too.
Perhaps you’re right, though none of the players you mentioned were under threat of sanctions the way Russia was.
Anyway, I mostly agree with your point of view. The Kremlin was and is weak.
I assume they had written something…
If you are interested in reading something by a serious journalist (now deceased alas) have a look at the articles referred to in comments 45 & 61.
I don’t like the fact that Ukraine led the investigation
Not only that, it was reported in 2014 that there was a non-disclosure agreement so that in effect Ukraine would have a veto on information released. The Dutch government in 2017 seemed to deny the existence of this agreement, but the evidence appears relatively clear:
And here is a copy of a (ostensibly real) letter from the Australian Government confirming it.
“If such circumstances were present, I’m sure the Ukrainians would be able to suppress them, because they are the ones leading the investigation, and the investigators are probably under severe pressure to implicate Russia and not to push too hard on any possible Ukrainian angle.”
THIS. Even if I didn’t think a BUK missile manufactured in 1986 USSR screams post-1991 Ukrop inherited SAM, and for the sake of argument this was a horrible accident and not a false flag from the same people who brought you the Maidan snipers killing both sides and easily slipping away without a single casualty from Maidan self-defense who had a small arsenal of pistols, shotguns, hunting rifles and Molotov cocktails to storm the sniping points with (but conveniently did not because Putin’s FSB killers like OJ’s real killers had to get away)…the only logical reason why a Russian launched BUK would hit MH17 is if a Ukro jet were in the immediate vicinity and the missile locked on to the largest target instead of the fighter. Otherwise, even if untrained Cossacks were manning the damned thing there would have had to be in the Bellingcrap/JIT version at least one professional member of the 53rd brigade with the system to keep the crewmen from doing some silly thing like shooting down an airliner flying at a predictable course/higher altitude and speed than any Ukie Antonov supply drop jet would.
I cannot believe the GRU who’ve been pretty damn effective at raising a proxy army in the LDNR and kicking the crap out of al-CIA-eda proxies in Syria would be that stupid and negligent…even if for the sake of quasi-plausible deniability they decided to make an old Russian BUK that had been removed from active service look like the UAF BUK abandoned outside Donetsk that the NAF captured weeks before. (And I suspect a lot of what Bellingcat was doing initially was picking up SBU photoshopped pics of their own SAMs, which they got caught doing in the first few days after the shoot down, before BUK 3×2 was concocted by the OSINT clean up crew that stands behind Bellingcat). Also the stupidity of driving the thing in broad daylight through multiple towns to reach the Russian border, where the SBU’s informants could film it without waiting until dark makes no sense to me. But neither does the idea of a BUK with a skeleton crew for protection against UAF/SBU Alfa special forces riding along in a couple of SUVs, at a time when the frontlines were very porous and not nearly as solid as the Novaya Gazeta reporters or German journalists who visited the town where Almaz Antey said a Ukrainian missile would’ve been fired from claimed. In other words, any above MANPAD range SAM would have been a high priority target for UAF sabotage and reconnaissance teams.
Also if maintaining plausible deniability is why a BUK that could’ve been theoretically captured from the Ukies was sent to protect the NAF instead of Russia just parking S300/400s at the border and blowing the Ukrainian SU25 jets flying high to evade MANPADs away, why did the Russians shoot down the Antonov turboprop with (depending on whatever version Kiev Defense Ministry agreed upon) a Pantsir S1 SAM that doesn’t exist in the Ukrainian arsenal or a Russian Air Force fighter jet along the border? Does anyone else notice how Bellingcat never bothered to do an open source investigation of that little episode preceding MH17, likely because it would bolster the case and expose Ukrainian denials that they forward deployed their own BUKs to protect their units from the expected Russian air attacks?
The Bellingcat/JIT version is shoddy, full of holes like those stated above, and almost certainly designed to cover up at least Ukrainian criminal negligence in using commercial air routes for their SU25 bombers if not a Ukie false flag. AK rolls over too easily to their narrative. It’s been four years for God sakes and you know the media is tightly controlled when only the Russophobic crazies like ex-NSA man John R. Schindler can be bothered to call on the U.S. to release its SIGINT or satellite imagery supposedly shown to the JIT.
“Israeli-made air-to-air missile may have downed MH17” with all due respect Anatoly, the Georgian Air Force operates SU25KMs which during the Saakashvili years were set up with Elbit Systems cockpits capable of firing Israeli made Python AAMs. While I doubt the Ukrainian Air Force pilot who was recently suicide-d actually shot down MH17 with old Soviet AAMs, I do think he knew something about the Ukrainian Air Force potentially borrowing Georgian jets, as did Saakashvili.
So despite the increasingly fierce Dutch claims that no Ukrainian jets were flying that day and vigorous denials that the Russians supplied any useful radar data (as opposed to the Ukrainians who immediately disappeared the Dnepro control tower crew whom we’ve never heard anything about the Dutch or Malaysians getting to interview if it were a proper investigation), I don’t think at least an aircraft in close proximity has been ‘debunked’ at all. But only the eyewitnesses who supposedly saw the BUK driving back to Russia count, not those who will give their real names on camera who insist they saw Ukie jets aloft that day.
I feel like the only hope the break the info blockade is for Putin to order Russian military to declassify more especially SIGINT of Ukrainian Air Force ops that day (let the Bellingcat kids insist all of that audio is fake while insisting SBU soundcloud is 100% legit) or for the Malaysians, perhaps prodded by China after the U.S. recent South China Sea stunts, to grow some more balls and call BS on some Ukie vetoes of incriminating stuff. I still think a BUK would’ve torn the pilots into mincemeat not left their upper torsos largely intact as their relative recounted to RT when she was briefly shown an open coffin before the bodies were sealed up (haste of Islamic burial certainly would help in any cover up of non BUK shrapnel in the remains).
I agree there have been a lot of stupid theories and fakes in the Russian media, but putting out ridiculous propaganda to discredit the other side’s true claims is something the Brits have been doing well since WW1, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some non-RT Russian journos were paid off.
“The Bellingcat/JIT version is shoddy, full of holes like those stated above” also don’t forget in an environment where GRAD launches including Smerch cluster munition rockets were indeed filmed being fired from the Russian side of the border (for once Bellingcat got that one right, even if their crater analysis is the usual draw squiggly lines over satellite pics bs), how in the world did we only end up with a single (most certainly fake) shot of the missile contrail? Makes no sense at all.
These are just some of the many reasons why I can’t buy the U.S./JIT/Bellingcat version of what happened, even if I could be persuaded that it was a rebel or UAF screwup rather than a false flag.
No BUK trail for the Antonov turboprop shoot down, which is likely why Kiev’s Defense Ministry claimed initially it was brought down by a Russian Air Force jet (AAM streak wouldn’t be visible at high altitude even on a clear day). See my other comment. I still think this shot was way too high even for the newest Russian MANPADs.
Pretty good arguments presented here.
The same reasoning makes me very skeptical about anything that comes from the “official” investigation. Especially since, lately, more and more evidence surface about the false flag nature of the Maidan shootings.
Just one more thought. It takes a special kind of idiot to equate the consequences of this accident with previous similar cases, like the shooting down of Iranian or South Korean airliners. While the latter constitute a, more or less, legitimate errors, the Malaysian airliner downing, if done by elements of RF military even in error, would constitute an illegitimate act that will reflect heavy on Russia.
Good comments, but, I think you are on the wrong track.
I’ll try to explain.
You draw your conclusions based on Western standards. Things work differently in Russia.
I have a feeling that you haven’t worked with Russian military. Worked, in real, on a daily basis for a period of time. Especially in high intensity exercise/real mission.
So, while you are definitely correct in:
That one professional member could’ve been drunk, scared, dead tired, utterly exhausted and, most likely, a simple combination of all that.
I can, with ease.
and
Again, ever worked with Russians? Worked, being with them, among them? No need to answer. They can do things a member of Western military wouldn’t believe. You could call it “reckless daring” or whatever.
No, it’s not that crazy. Sometimes that approach makes impossible possible.
Sometimes, though, the same makes possible unworkable. Stupid mistakes. Or, just mistakes.
I feel this was one of those.
I have 2 questions.
What’s your opinion of PPP vs nominal GDP? Do you think PPP is a legitimate adjustment or an unneeded adjustment? Do you think that when comparing the relative economic strengths of 2 nations, PPP or nominal GDP (per capita) should be utilized?
Thanks.
Let’s see your arguments:
All of these would be classified as “circumstantial” evidence in any court, and, thus, not taken into consideration or, to put it differently, it would be disregarded. At least, that’s how it is in movies.
On a side note, I’d like to ask how reckless is to think that one can win a war against the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union fighting on their turf? In hindsight, everyone would say very, very reckless.
Yet, there were two guys, one Frenchman and one German, who thought just that. And thousands that followed them. Recklessly.
Funny.
Russians do some things differently then Western militaries;
They often disregard rules and military discipline as seen in professional Western militaries.
Russians sometimes accomplish astonishing things because they sometimes make reckless moves.
Sometimes they end up doing stupid things due to above mentioned recklessness.
Sometimes accomplish astonishing things, sometimes make stupid things……
We aren’t in the court.
And, what court that might be? That one which can’t touch members of US military but imprisons, for life, elders from Third World countries?
Even has some…ahm…suicides….when things don’t go as smoothly as scripted.
True.
Even more funny is that’s not needed anymore.
You just co-opt Russian elites into own system. Worked as a charm from ’89 to 2000.
Feels it’s working again…….
The hilariously funny is that “The Team Russia” constantly waits for land invasion and repetition of Kursk.
The oponent doesn’t even think about it. It simply gives the Russian elites prime property in London, French Riviera…..preferential treatment in Western banks…the works.
As for serfs there, well, there is always a new wonder weapon and the rest of management tools to keep them in their place.
Fear not.
It’s all multidimensional chess commoners can’t comprehend. Guys like me. Team Russia comprehends that, of course. That makes them feel very good.
Sooner or later we’ll see the triumph of that phylosophy and strategy.
All we need is to wait a bit.
And then a bit more…and more.
So…while we, and serfs there in particular wait, in our modest (or less modest) homes, those elites wait in their super-yachts and villas.
Funny, a?
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/no-conclusive-evidence-russia-behind-mh17-downing-malaysia-10290266