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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.
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.
The Dutch inquiry have tracked down the fucking serial number of the SAM from the shrapnel.
Link, please. And what is the serial number, since you have this important information?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You have no point. You're just spewing useless facts. The origin of Ukraine's material is not in dispute and is utterly irrelevant. The origin of Daesh/ISIS/whatever's material is not in dispute - they were financed by Qataris, looted the incompetent Iraqi forces, charged local populations protection money and bought weapons on the black market - and is absolutely irrelevant to the current discussion.
The DSB determined that the plane was destroyed by a SAM, directly contradicting the Kremlin's fantasy story.
Now, let's look at more facts:
* Several Ukrainian aircraft had been shot down in the previous month, with Little Green Men ("separatists") boasting about it.
* The Ukrainians say they had no SAMs in the area. This is believable, because they had literally no aerial targets whatsoever. There is no military reason to have a SAM launcher in the area, much less to operate one.
* The Russian Little Green Men were very quick to boast of having downed a supposed Ukrainian transport aircraft.
* There is no Ukrainian aircraft missing that could be attributed to such an event.
* The Russian Little Green Men were even quicker to try to eliminate the aforementioned boasts from the internet.
* A Russian Buk was spotted hastily leaving the area with one conspicuously-absent missile
* Instead of cooperating with a transparent investigation, as is required by international law, the Little Green Men stonewalled every attempt at investigation on-site for months. They tampered with the scene (at least by virtue of being there, probably beyond that).
* The Kremlin's theory is pure bullshit - the damage is not consistent with Air-to-Air missiles or cannon fire, the supposedly responsible fighter doesn't even have enough performance to get to the same flight level as a 777 in cruise (except for a possible upgraded variant - which only Russia has!)
The only logical conclusion:
The self-titled separatists or their Russian Little Green Men handlers shot down MH17 with a Buk. Most likely the latter, since a Buk is not something you can just train a random troublemaking hired gun on in a haste. They intended to hit another Ukrainian aircraft but misidentified their target or didn't even bother to try. They fucked up and were extracted in a hurry.
Odd loose ends:
Why did the stonewalling proceed for so long? Clearly, they could've put on the show for a week to do a cleanup to remove any traces of the Buk. And the Russians (who were illegally sent the black boxes, since they were not involved in the investigation - the DSB, representing the majority of the victims and the flight's origin; the US NTSB, representing the state of manufacture; or the Malaysian counterpart as the state of the operator were the only logical choices) did not evidently tamper with the black boxes (if they did, they were incompetent), since their data is 100% consistent with the debris.
Why claim it was a SU-25? Surely the Kremlin's Guy in Charge of Soviet Bullshit has enough resources to choose an appropriate plane to claim that the Ukrainians used.
Additional comments:
"Little Green Men" and "separatists" are used interchangeably. Technically, there are a few groups (in an approximate order of significance at the time): Russian troublemakers sent by the Kremlin; Russian troops operating without identification (which, I'd like to remind everyone, is a war crime) - these include specialized units handling Russian equipment that requires training; real Ukrainian citizens who do want to be Russian and, finally, a tiny portion of Russian volunteers swayed by propaganda.
RT is an incredibly biased source located in a country known for its love of bullshit stories that are meant to cover-up its mistakes. It is not to be taken seriously. A Daesh twitter account will probably have fewer lies than RT.
Some final, personal comments:
The whole treatment of the issue is frankly disgusting. Putin is a very small person (he's also shorter than he'd like to show, judging by his pres