Boeing 777 shot down

Man of Honour
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As we presumed all along, it was the Russians: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44235402

What happens next?

Almost certainly nothing. Russia is too powerful. The Russian government will deny it and put some story out through its propaganda outlets. Governments of other countries will say Russia did a bad thing. Maybe a few low-level diplomats will be sent home so some governments can be seen to be Doing Something. Things will carry on as normal...unless Russia goes so far so fast so openly that war can't be avoided. Which I think very unlikely - Putin is too skilled a politician for that.
 
Associate
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baffled as to why they did it though

It was a mistake. They thought it was a Ukrianian military plane. They did not realise it was civilian until it hit the ground (you can hear/see this from leaked videos) and explains why they quickly moved the BUK missiles back into Russia and denied all knowledge.
 
Caporegime
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Almost certainly nothing. Russia is too powerful. The Russian government will deny it and put some story out through its propaganda outlets. Governments of other countries will say Russia did a bad thing. Maybe a few low-level diplomats will be sent home so some governments can be seen to be Doing Something. Things will carry on as normal...unless Russia goes so far so fast so openly that war can't be avoided. Which I think very unlikely - Putin is too skilled a politician for that.

Even he must have a limit of boredom with the level of incompetency in his military staff, there was a reason he fired a bunch awhile ago, i doubt it was just about keeping the house in check for the sake of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the crew were shot for that, it probably put a dent in his "super secret" invade Ukraine plan.
 
Soldato
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baffled as to why they did it though

From what I recall of the events around the time this happened, Ukrainian airborne forces were holding onto pocket of territory in a rebel held area surrounding Donetsk airport, and they were able to do so due to resupply from the air. The Ukranians had been using the likes of turbo-prop powered Antonov AN-26's, AN-32's and the like to drop supplies, and so the rebels had brought in AA weapons and suceeded in bringing down one of these in the weeks/days running up to the shooting down of MH17. The Ukrainians therefore switched to using Ilyushin IL-76's for this role, large, jet powered transport aircraft that could stay up out of reach of the AA weapons that the rebels had used up until that point. Thus, the Russians must have seen fit to counter this by either giving the rebels BUK's, or deploying their own to cut the Ukranian para's off from their air resupply, that was so far allowing them to hold on to their pocket behind rebel lines.
 
Man of Honour
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From what I recall of the events around the time this happened, Ukrainian airborne forces were holding onto pocket of territory in a rebel held area surrounding Donetsk airport, and they were able to do so due to resupply from the air. The Ukranians had been using the likes of turbo-prop powered Antonov AN-26's, AN-32's and the like to drop supplies, and so the rebels had brought in AA weapons and suceeded in bringing down one of these in the weeks/days running up to the shooting down of MH17. The Ukrainians therefore switched to using Ilyushin IL-76's for this role, large, jet powered transport aircraft that could stay up out of reach of the AA weapons that the rebels had used up until that point. Thus, the Russians must have seen fit to counter this by either giving the rebels BUK's, or deploying their own to cut the Ukranian para's off from their air resupply, that was so far allowing them to hold on to their pocket behind rebel lines.

Wish there was more information on what was actually going on - I was watching some of the intel aggregators feeds during that time and there was progressive attempts (mostly fails) at shooting down planes at higher and higher altitude leading upto the cargo plane just before and then MH17 but it doesn't really tell you much - in most cases there it just listed "unknown launcher" for failed attempts.
 
Soldato
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I used to follow events surrounding the situation in Ukraine on Militaryphotos.net back in the day. Pro-Russian trolling was starting to become a problem before MH17, but in the aftermath it was stepped up to the point that it became debilitating, and it became impossible to discuss anything there. Even none Ukraine/Russia threads were hijacked, and the site started to suffer a spate of hacking and DDoS attacks until eventually, the site owner had enough, and pulled the plug.
 
Soldato
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The Ukranians had been using the likes of turbo-prop powered Antonov AN-26's, AN-32's and the like to drop supplies, and so the rebels had brought in AA weapons and suceeded in bringing down one of these in the weeks/days running up to the shooting down of MH17. The Ukrainians therefore switched to using Ilyushin IL-76's for this role, large, jet powered transport aircraft that could stay up out of reach of the AA weapons that the rebels had used up until that point.
The loyalist forces didn't really switch between plane types they switched to flying at higher altitudes, both the turboprop Antonovs and jet Ilyushins are capable of that. I.E the IL-76 shot down on June 16th was downed using a shoulder mounted SAM launcher, but the AN-26 shot down on July 14th was flying too high to be hit by shoulder mounted SAMS and at the time people hypothesized it was downed using one of the Buks the separatists had captured from loyalist forces, but if it is now proven Russia had been supplying additional Buks to the rebels then it could also have been done using one of them.
 
Man of Honour
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but if it is now proven Russia had been supplying additional Buks to the rebels then it could also have been done using one of them.

One things is there seems to be suppression of the earlier recordings where they appear to be talking about multiple Buks - but it isn't 100% clear what they are actually talking about and equally could have been that they were expecting a second unit to arrive from Russia after the one we know of rather than referring to one(s) that might or might not have been sourced within Ukraine.
 
Soldato
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it isn't 100% clear what they are actually talking about and equally could have been that they were expecting a second unit to arrive from Russia after the one we know of rather than referring to one(s) that might or might not have been sourced within Ukraine.
There isn't really any might or might not considering the separatists posted pictures of the ones then captured from Ukrainian forces in June on their social media pages bragging about it lol (of course these posts mysteriously disappeared the day MH17 went down, nothing nefarious there at all :p)
 
Caporegime
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So MH17 is back in the news, 4 charged with shooting the plane down.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48691488

Dutch investigators have accused three Russians - Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov - and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko of involvement.

Passenger flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over conflict-hit Ukraine.

International arrest warrants have been issued for the four men.

Will be interesting to read the report when it comes out.
 
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