http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28361908
Both sides blaming each other.
My bet is the rebels had Russian made SAM's for shooting down Ukranian jets, but they aimed at the wrong target. Russia has blood on it's hands here as well as the rebels.
Plus the rebels have given the black boxes to Russia. The Ukranians won't believe a word of the Russian report.

if a country at war kills civilians from a different nation, isn't that a war declaration?

Story is that you can't knock down an airliner in flight using a shoulder-launched SAM, so it was most likely done with an SA-11 AAA battery, which is proper military tech. The Ukranian Army does have a few of them but they're swearing blind none of them are missing or in enemy hands. Besides, the rebels have virtually no air assets, so there's no reason for the Ukranian army to be operating such types of AAA in that area. The rebels, meanwhile, knocked down a Ukranian military transport - which is pretty much exactly the same as an airliner - recently. And there are rumours Russia has been giving them some serious kit on the sly.

The one thing that gets me is this - you don't just push a button with a serious piece of equipment like this. You definitely have to be trained to operate it. Even if they got the nature of the target wrong, whoever fired that missile would have to have to know exactly what they were doing - how to read the displays, how to lock and maintain the target etc. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the rebels were ex military (anyone know if Ukraine has/had compulsory military service?) but knowing how to operate an SA-11 system is a pretty specific set of skills.

Occam's razor does kind of suggest the rebels knocked it down in the mistaken belief it was a military transport. But it seems likely they could only have done so if the Russians supplied them with the means and training to do so.

Yes, but if it was the rebels they don't actually represent any nation state, so it doesn't really get viewed that way. And I'm not sure Malaysia is equipped to start a war with anybody. It could be viewed as a justification for the UN to get more directly involved in Eastern Ukraine - i.e. troops on the ground in powder blue helmets. There's a Security Council debate scheduled for quite soon, maybe even today. Given Russia have a permanent seat on the council and an available veto, it could get very interesting indeed...

Jon

[LIFTED]!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28405047

Damn right, you f***ing shouldn't!

They’ve got enough problems with the scene being contaminated by the locals rummaging through the wreckage, without some ghoulish hack from the Murdoch Empire doing the same.

There's a New Republic article claiming the media coverage inside Russia is wildly different from elsewhere on the planet.

Tinfoil hats at the ready...

Conspiracy theory

Rebels/russians give black boxes to the UK.
Clicky

They've been unsupervised for, what, 72 hours? I don't know if they encrypt the data they record but if they don't, I'd consider it suspect.

Jon

I expect this will be forefront of the minds of those investigating the crash as well. The site’s been contaminated, the black box is suspect too. Hopefully there will be ways to determine tampering, and even “undo” some of it.

Yay, it's the Whitehall sources!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28439862