Well, This Is Going To Complicate Things

Some one (suspected to be a Russian separatist fighter. The separatists in my opinion are at least lead by Russian special forces teams) has shot down a Malaysian Airliner with 295 aboard at the Russian/Ukranian border.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 shot down over territory held by Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine

Body parts and wreckage spread over nine-mile area, suggesting plane broke up mid-air

Whitehall sources say up to ten Britons feared dead, 23 Americans and 71 Dutch passengers thought to be on board

Britain requests an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York

US President Barack Obama calls the crash a ‘terrible tragedy’, and offers condolences to passengers’ families

The plane was said to be shot down by a BUK missile.

The BUK missile system is a set of medium range surface-to-air missile systems which were first developed in the Soviet Union and continue to be produced by Russia.

Designed to take out cruise missiles, aircrafts, helicopters and short range ballistic missiles, they can reach altitudes of up to 15.5miles, according to the manufacturer’s website.

Developed by Moscow firm Almaz-Antey, they are thought to have been used during the Russian war with Georgia in the territory of South Ossetia in 2008.

The “separatists” are standing down for 3 days to allow an investigation.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the sanctions recently imposed on Russia because of the fighting in the Ukraine.

Russia slams latest US sanctions over Ukraine as ‘bullying’

If this sort of thing keeps up it could cause a full fledged European War. Just in time for The Guns of August.

Update:

I have been reading further into the Daily Mail article and came across this bit:

Ukraine’s state security chief accused two Russian military intelligence officers of involvement in the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane in eastern Ukraine on Thursday and said they must be punished for their ‘crime’.

SBU chief Valentyn Nalivaychenko said he based his allegation on intercepts of phone conversations between the two officers.

‘Now you know who carried out this crime. We will do everything for the Russian military who carried out this crime to be punished,’ he told journalists.

If that turns out to be correct some one gave the order. Putin? Probably.

USA Today had this to say:

On Wednesday, a Russian military plane allegedly shot down a Ukrainian jet fighter over Ukrainian territory, forcing the pilot to eject, according to the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council. The pilot of the Su-25 assault aircraft was not injured and was rescued by Ukrainian military units.

Pro-Russia rebels, meanwhile, claimed responsibility for strikes Wednesday on two Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 jets. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the second jet was hit by a portable surface-to-air missile, but added the pilot was unscathed and managed to land his plane safely.

“There have been Ukrainian helicopters and aircraft operating under the assumption of limited separatist capabilities,” said Damon Wilson, a Russia and Ukraine expert in the administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “They’ve learned quite rudely that the separatists have more advanced weapons.”

Separatists have used a version of Russia’s Grad rocket that the Russian military only started using in January, Wilson said, citing sources in “U.S. government circles.”

“This is not older, former equipment but among the most recent Russian equipment used in the Russian military,” said Wilson, now deputy executive vice president at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

Which kind of confirms my notion that the “rebels” are really Russian troops.

From the twittering classes.

BREAKING: Armed Russian Separatists now in control of the MH17 crash site and not allowing anyone approach the wreckage – @ABC
— NewsBreaker (@NewsBreaker) July 17, 2014

And if they are hard at work destroying evidence?