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.