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Kremlin Falls For Its Own Fake Satellite Imagery (thedailybeast.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Turkish downing of the Russian SU-24 jet last November saw a predictable series of statements from each side claiming complete innocence and blaming the other entirely. Social media was a key battleground for both sides — the Turkish and Russian governments, along with their supporters — as each tried to establish a dominant narrative explanation for what had just happened. In the midst of the online competition, a little-observed, funhouse mirror of an online hoax was brilliantly perpetrated, one with consequences likely exceeding the expectation of the hoaxster. The Russian Ministry of Defense was duped by a fake image that Russian state media itself had circulated more than a year earlier, as a way to deny Moscow's involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
WTF? The only claims I've ever seen to the effect that MH-117 had been shot down by *another plane* have come from the Russians.
Everybody else says and has been saying all along that it was a Russian-made AA battery, probably used by the rebels after getting it from the Russians. The Dutch investigation appears to confirm this.
Of course the Russians are the only people saying MH-17 might have been shot down by a fighter. The Ukrainian Armed Forces had the only fighters in the country at that time. (They may all have rusted to bits by now, or fallen to pieces for lack of maintenance). So if a fighter did the deed, it could only have been on the orders of the Kiev junta.
The term "Russian-made" is an interesting though disingenuous piece of sophistry. Of course, as Ukraine was part of the USSR, all its military equipment was "Russian-made" (although it might have been manufactured and even designed anywhere in the USSR, including Ukraine itself). Logically, the fact that a weapon is "Russian-made" implies that it might be used by the UAF - or not. It definitely cannot be used to imply that it wasn't used by the UAF. Incidentally, it would be interesting to notice where the weapons come from that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups use. Namely the USA; although the US armed forces lose so much of their weapons and equipment through negligence and sheer forgetfulness that it's hard to know if this is deliberate or not in any given case. However the Russian helicopter that was shot down and destroyed by terrorists while trying to rescue the crew of the shot-down Su-24 was definitely hit by an American TOW missile.
The Dutch inquiry hasn't decided much of anything, and certainly hasn't published much useful evidence. Here is some insight into the feelings of the victims' relatives: http://www.rt.com/news/310195-...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You should understand the seriousness of the situation. After the turkish downed that russian Su-24 plane, resulting in the death of one of the pilots and a an airborne assault trooper involved in the other's rescue mission, Russia's GRU provided sensitive HUMINT data to the marxist kurdish rebels. Based on that data, a kurdish workers' party kamikaze car bomb rammed an (otherwise unmarked) bus carrying turkish air force personnel. The explosion killed 20 pilots and maimed several others, who were flying F-16s for the Turkish AF. The KIA included the particular pilot who downed the Su-24. Two full fighter jet squadrons immediately lost their combat capability due to lack of personnel and no turkish pilot will dare to go anywhere red star marked planes for a long time... This is how things are done by Russia.
NATO is not willing to stand up for Turkey any more, because Erdogan behaves like a total lunatic and better replace him with a logically calculating general in a soon to happen coup d'etat. (Military dictatorship has always been the normal way of life in post-ottoman Turkey.)
But if Turkey still tries to play the role of a strong guy, their military airports will be pelted by russian Iskhander ballistic missiles (~ Pershing-2 on steroids). You may consider that Blackwater recently pulled out all of is mercenary troops from Saudi Arabia, after the houthi rebels of Yemen pelted them with smaller ballistic missiles made in Iran, copycats of the russian Tochka-M design, in total killing almost a thousand saudis and mercenaries in six precision strikes. There were many high ranking officers among the dead and large amount of vehicles destroyed, because the missiles impact at Mach 6 and can cause tremendous devastation with just half a ton of conventional warhead. It's like a man-made asteroid. many sources think the suprisingly successfull houthi rebels are actually a mixture of yemeni locals, iranian spec-ops troops and russian military advisors.
Of course Russians are guilty.
As are Ukrainian air traffic controllers for letting civil aircraft into an area where planes have been shot at and shot down on regular basis during days leading to MH17 disaster. This part of dutch report is not all that popular for some reason.