18 July 2014

MH17 -- another Putin disaster

First off, let's be clear that yes, we do know beyond any real doubt that it was the Russian-backed "rebels" in eastern Ukraine who shot down MH17.  They've been shooting at Ukrainian military aircraft in the same area on a regular basis recently.  They have the "Buk" anti-aircraft system, supplied by Russia, which is capable of hitting planes at airliner cruising altitude.  A recording of rebel officers discussing having shot down a plane, then finding out that it was civilian, has been released.  The Putin regime has made a feeble effort to blame the Ukrainian government, but Ukrainian forces have not been using anti-aircraft weapons for the simple reason that the rebels are not using aircraft.

Here is a good report on what's currently known and on world reactions, and here's some video of the crash site -- real video, not the sanitized images the US media give you with human corpses edited out, so be warned.

This is ultimately Putin's fault.  He made the decision to supply powerful military weapons to what are basically the Russo-Ukrainian equivalents of the trigger-happy morons who rallied around the Bundy ranch back in April and are now freaking out at random school buses in Arizona.  It was easily foreseeable that some gargantuan fuck-up like this would be the result.

Of the 298 people killed, 154 were Dutch and at least 17 were from other European countries.  So much for Putin's efforts to discourage Europe from joining in US sanctions against Russia.  The sanctions are to punish Russia for supporting the rebels, and that support has now hit Europeans hard.

Putin is now all the more strongly confirmed as what the Ukrainian crisis and the corruption-riddled Sochi Olympics revealed him to be -- a dangerous and reckless bungler.  He will remain an embarrassment and liability to Russia as long as he stays in power.  Let's hope that won't be much longer.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Marc McKenzie said...

Another solid post...well-written.

Sadly, there will be those who, even in the face of ironclad evidence, will defend Putin and try to shift blame elsewhere.

18 July, 2014 07:16  
Anonymous Ahab said...

The perpetrators have shown themselves to be not only dangerous, but incompetent. Shooting down a civilian plane (which it sounds like they mistook for a military plane) will not only alienate their allies, but earn them new enemies. The governments of the victims won't take this disaster lying down.

If the initial tragedy wasn't heartbreaking enough, we're now learning that several AIDS researchers were aboard MH17 en route to an AIDS conference in Australia.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/aids-conference-attendees-downed-malaysian-jet-24611650

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/07/18/australia-melbourne-flags-to-be-flown-at-half-mast-for-aids-conference-after-mh17-crash/

Yeah, killing innocent people who devoted their lives to treating disease and easing suffering will do WONDERS for the separatists' PR! Ugh.

18 July, 2014 09:39  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Marc: Thanks for the kind words.

Sadly, there will be those who, even in the face of ironclad evidence, will defend Putin and try to shift blame elsewhere.

Indeed, and I stirred up a whole bunch of them when I cross-posted this post to a site frequented by far-righties. Some people truly are impervious to reality.

Ahab: I've been reading about the AIDS researchers on the plane. This must be the starkest case of thug-vs-thinker symbolism since that Roman soldier stabbed Archimedes.

It's going to be open season on the separatists now. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

18 July, 2014 18:46  
Blogger Shaw Kenawe said...

Good report. I'm quoting and linking to it on my blog. Too many on the right wasted their time complaining that President Obama didn't say enough about the tragedy on the day it happened. Like children, they need instant analyses on anything that happens, and the outlets they rely on are usually wrong about the facts. But that doesn't stop them from getting hysterical over the president's measured response.

19 July, 2014 05:26  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

No matter what Obama did, they'd criticize it. Aren't you glad that these hotheads aren't in charge of handling our relationship with a reckless bungler who has 8,000 nuclear weapons?

19 July, 2014 09:45  
Blogger Ranch Chimp said...

I havent kept up with this too much or read any blog's or whatever to even have a opinion or view at this point on it ... but Thanx for the read here.

20 July, 2014 04:56  

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