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Malaysian Passenger Plane Reportedly Shot Down Over Ukraine
An anonymous reader writes The Russian newswire service Interfax is reporting that a Malaysian passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down with a Buk ground-to-air missile over Ukraine near the Russian border. The Associated Press cites an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister as the source. First reports are that it was mistaken for a Ukrainian AN-26.
Malaysia airlines confirms they lost contact with the plane (last known position), but there's no confirmation it was shot down (yet). The Ukrainian government accused Russia of shooting down a fighter jet in Ukrainian airspace last night. Reports indicate there are no survivors.
What a horrible tragedy, and one that changes the political climate considerably. Obama will face much less resistance from Europe if Russia turns out to be responsible. It also gives the Ukraine a reason to call in US "specialists" for help with the investigation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yeah, an issue on board caused by a freaking antiaircraft missile, right?
Actually as I heard it Russia actually shot down a Su-25 the other day as well, so this may have been a result of an overzealous commander telling his subordinates to shoot down "everything that flies."
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I don't think MANPADS can hit a plane at that altitude. Early reports said this plane was at nearly 30-50k altitude on it's way to Moscow and most MANPAD systems have fairly limited altitude ranges in the 2 mile range. This is the reason Ukraine accused Russia of shooting that other plane transport plane down, it was at an altitude that very very few MANPAD systems are capable of reaching.
Either Russia has given the insurgents some very high tech MANPADS or Russia shot the plane down using an air defense system like the S300. You need pretty advanced (and relatively large) missiles to reach the altitude that commercial airlines fly at.
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
To get to the other side?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Well then, to add to the speculation... On Reuters via Twitter, reporter Anne Applebaum tweeted this: Donetsk commander Strelkov, longtime Russian agent, claimed credit today for shooting plane he thought was Ukrainian http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bsw... Though I can not read Russian (could someone please translate?), I don't get the sense that it says anything too positive though.
Citation required (seriously, you couldn't be bothered?)
I can't find anything to back your claim.
Please help metamoderate.
This is a capture of the message in the VK network sent by Russian GRU officer Strelkov admitting that he ordered the missile strike against the Malaysian jet: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bs...
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Because the time & fuel savings were weighed to be more significant than any risks to commercial air traffic? Until today.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Translating from russian... "Near Torez (city) an An-26 airplane was just shot down, it crashed somewhere beyond "Progress" mine site. We warned beforehand - do not fly over "our zone". Here's another video proof of the next "birdfall". A birdie crashed down beyond terricon (mine excavation site), missed living areas. Population not harmed. We also allegedly have info on another SU-25 shot down".
To answer your question...
The location tracking clearly indicated it is a normal flight path and at an altitude where only radar guided type missiles could hit. In other words, the weapons that could reach the altitude for it to hit should have known it was a passenger airplane. Unless they were rebels given equipment with very little training and no infrastructure to compare the flight paths with known flights.
Firstly, I'd like to note that I'm not placing blame with any particular party or saying that this was definitely an incident where the plane was shot down. With that said, the plane was in the older Malysia Airlines livery, which has the bottom of the fuselage and engine nacelles painted grey. Perhaps this could contribute to it being mistaken for a military transport by inexperienced or trigger-happy forces, as it would be a similar color to that used on those transports. I hope the truth of this incident can be found without politics getting in the way on every side. The crew and passengers deserve it.
I share your hope but not your optimism.
Your optimism is misplaced. Photos of the crash are on Reuters website, and reports of debris and body parts are coming in. The big question now is who shot it down. Most fingers are pointing at the pro-Russian rebels.
If civilian commercial aviation is becoming fair game for armies seeking to gain advantage, then the world has just gone to a very bad place.
At least for that flight number, it apparently wasn't on a normal flight path. It was around 100 miles further north than that flight flew on previous days.
Check the FlightAware tracking data.
Don't know if that is significant or not but it's easy to verify for yourself. All the other flights on the page of MAL17 flights go over the Sea of Azov or even south of it. This one was well off to the north of it.
Again, don't know why or if that even matters, but at least compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region. Not that that is a reason to shoot it down.
It's not my primary source, but it's hardly surprising when something like this actually gets posted.
Because it is stuff that matters.
As opposed to all of the whining and bitching about Apple v Microsoft and other pointless stuff that goes on around here.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same. We elected new president just 6 weeks ago, so please stop making noises about illegality of UA's government. This was ridiculous at the time Russians started saying this, and it's old now.
Two other airplanes (non-commercial with much lower loss of life and thus less interesting to news outlets I presume) were shot down within the week in similar airspace. Why aren't we discussing those?
Because non-commercial airplanes being shot down in a war zone is not an out-of-the-ordinary technical news... not unless there were interesting technical attributes to the story .ie. new anti-missile system technology, radar, anti-missile technology failure, etc.
A commercial jet, and a big one at that, being shot down in a war zone, then brings a whole bunch of technical topics to discuss? What lead to the airplane being mis-identified? What technical prevention mechanisms could have been used to prevent this? Would it be worth while to explore temporary expansion of flight routes to avert war zones? Etc, etc.
Go ahead and try to put a techie spin on it, but the point remains that we're only oogling over this because a bunch of people died, which not only seem distasteful, but again, has nothing to with the type of news this site represents.
No, that is only you putting that spin on it so that you can accuse others of distasteful oogling. Stop projecting... or not, whatever rocks your boat and gives you a moment to build faux moral outrage and pass it as your moral accomplishment of the day.
Canadian design, obviously.
ITAR-TASS (Russian state owned) reported eyewitness claims that "Militiamen of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) brought down a military transport Antonov-26 (An-26) plane of the Ukrainian Air Force on the outskirts of the town of Torez..."
Given that the geographic area is predominantly occupied by separatists ("eyewitnesses"), and the speed with which the report got to Russia, that report may be a "smoking gun," almost literally.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
Yep, just like the neo-Nazi's who refuse to recognize Obama as President of the U.S. Same retards, different language.
... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force.
You mean when he fled the country with his looted money in the face of mass civilian protests. No military force was necessary, just a fear of justice after years of robbing his country and people.
>> I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
>Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
That would be a bit complicated since these territories are controlled by terrorists these days. As far as I know from refugees (and we have LOTS of those coming from Donetsk and Luhansk regions), local support for terrorists is minimal. It is mostly limited to local criminals, ex- political leaders (Communist and "Party of Regions" parties).
>>We elected new president just 6 weeks ago,
>... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force. This new election was held in full knowledge that the eastern (pro-Russian) regions were in turmoil and could not meaningfully participate.
Yanukovich was not overthrown by military force. There were clashes in the center if Kiev, but police and military was on his side at the time, and they had guns, grenades, armed vehicles; rebels had one catapult and molotov's. Yanukovich didn't care about anything besides money, and he fled the country as soon as he realized that there's not much more to make. Basically, he bled Ukraine's economy in a major way - to the extent where we had a revolution with majority support from UA's population. Odessa has been one of "his" regions. Majority of locals supported President Poroshenko (new elect), same goes for all other ex-Yanukovich's regions - Nikolaev, Kherson, Zaporizhya, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk where there was no turmoil at the time.
One last bit on "democratically elected" - I participated in 2004 elections as an observer - there's no such thing as democratic vote in regions controlled by Yanukovich representatives.
So, they apparently did have "that kind of hardware." Of course, today they're claiming they don't.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You say it like it's a good thing.. a big country isolated, hated and full of unhappy people. What could go wrong? I live right next door to them, and I'd much rather see them happy and enjoying life, because that way they'd probably be lot less likely to start new conflicts.
Only dumb birds land downwind.
If something looks like a duck, acts like a duck then it must be a duck. I heard plenty of stories of eye witnesses, now refugees from Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Saw hours of videos, photos, TV news etc. This is not a civil war. There are roughly 10,000 armed armed terrorists paid by ex-president Yanukovich, certain oligarchs and supported by Putin. Their goals are - to further destabilize Ukraine economically, politically; chop off a few more regions if possible, keep new UA government from making any reforms, generally keep UA attached to Russia, try to save property - production plants, mines, etc. Try to save control over certain regions. And they're failing, but we still have a very, very long way to go. For instance, the whole destabilization thing is likely to go on while Putin is in power, which may or may not last for long.