Malaysian airlines plane shot down over Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

I will not reflexively point the finger at Russia. It is not clear to me how this could benefit Russia. There are all sorts of things Russia could do to provoke another crisis in Ukraine without so blantantly blackening its own name by shooting down a third, neutural, country's passenger liner.

It's far more likely to be Russia IMO. The Ukrainian's only have a handful of BUK missiles and to my knowledge aren't really known to have used them that much whereas the Russians have a veritable arsenal of them.

Also, the passenger plane was approaching Russian airspace from the west. It had already flown over Ukrainian airspace for quite some time, it seems more likely to me that the Russian's would have seen this aircraft approaching from Ukrainian airspace, and they've obviously failed to identify it. They've then made the bizarre decision to simply shoot it down after failing to identify it. Seems the most likely outcome to me but I'm no expert.

Russia has total air supremacy. I see no reason why Russia would need to be worried about high level air threats from Ukraine such that it would be trigger happy. Ukraine, on the other hand, has incentive to be trigger happy because Russian air assets would likely enjoy otherwise near uncontested control of air space in Ukraine in case of conflict.

Also, Ukrainian command, communication and control was probably never very efficient, and it is probably still in a state of added confusion due to defection of pro-Russian officers and men. it appears Russian army and air defence force's training, command, control and communication would operate at level considerably above what Ukraine demonstrated. I think it is more likely for Ukraine to fail to identify the aircraft at local or central level than is for Russia, and it is also more likely for Ukraine to failed to pass the identification of the aircraft from one command to another, and thus creating the situation where a single command takes it upon itself to shoot down the bogey than it would be the case for Russia.