777 Crash In Ukraine

[Nonstop24/7]

TR, I stand corrected! The video was sent to me on email and stated that it was MH17.
NS

[LarryW]

Originally Posted by mark46th

The older SAM's from the Vietnam Era used bundles of rods scattered by the warhead. Is this style still used?

Yes sir. Continuous-rod warheads go way back in the history of naval and landbased SAMs, and are still very effective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-rod_warhead

[Hand]

The lines are really starting to get confusing.

Pro-Russia rebels operating in eastern Ukraine downed another two Su-25 fighter-bombers on Wednesday afternoon near the village of Dmytrivk just 25 miles from the crash site of the MH17 passenger jet, the country’s Defense Minister said.

A video posted to the Twitter account of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic shows heavily-armed men clad in helmets and military fatigues picking their way through burning debris at the alleged crash site as a series of explosions emanate from the wreckage. The footage has not been verified.
...

Ukraine’s national security spokesperson Andriy Lysenko told reporters that the fighter jets were returning from an airstrike mission on rebel positions when they were targeted by surface-to-air missiles.

Earlier in the day a VICE News reporter heard several loud explosions in the area followed by the Su-25 bomber planes roaring overhead as plumes of black smoke rose on the horizon.

According to Lysenko, “preliminary investigations” have shown that the “missile launch was carried out from the territory of the Russian Federation” because the height at which the planes were flying —17,000 feet — could not be hit by the MANPAD anti-aircraft weaponry possessed by the rebels.

Source

[akv]

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest." - Sir Winston Churchill in 1939

It’s not just about the Malaysian flight. Russians are living in an alternate reality.

By Mark Adomanis July 24 at 6:00 AM
Mark Adomanis specializes in Russian economics and demographics.

MOSCOW—Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 has already shined a spotlight on the Russian public’s somewhat, um, unique views. Russian media are running with conspiracy theories: that MH17 was shot down by NATO to spark a conflict with Russia, that MH17 wasn’t full of innocent civilians but week-old corpses, or that MH17 was shot down because it was mistaken for Vladimir Putin’s personal jet (as if anti-aircraft missiles weren’t aimed with radar but with a really large pair of binoculars). The only theory missing is the right one: that Russian-backed separatists accidentally shot down the plane when they mistook it for a Ukrainian military transport.

This may seem like the entertaining sideshow to a tragedy, but actually it’s just a window into a hugely dangerous problem. I recently moved to Moscow, and it’s hard to miss the extent to which Russian society exists in an alternate universe. Even well-educated, sophisticated people who have traveled widely in Europe and North America will frequently voice opinions that, in an American context, would place them alongside people wearing tinfoil hats. Russia is not living in the reality-based community.

One particularly easy and glaring example is Russian TV reporters, filing from Eastern Ukraine, who say they are reporting from the “Lugansk People’s Republic” or the “Donetsk People’s Republic.” Regardless of your views on the worsening civil war in Ukraine, which is not a neat story of black and white or right and wrong, it is obvious that these republics are almost entirely fictitious and that their “territory” is largely confined to a handful of government buildings. Despite their extremely dubious claims to legitimacy, the non-existent states are treated with deadly earnestness by both the state media and large numbers of ordinary Russians. (Ukraine has been a problem for Russian media ever since protests there began at the end of 2013.)

On almost any other issue you can think of, Russian views differ radically from the consensus here in America. Russians have extremely different opinions about the conflict in Syria, viewing the war in that unlucky country not as a brave struggle for freedom but as a chaotic war of all against all. They have different views about the war in Libya, where they see the overthrow of Gaddafi not as a new beginning but as the start of chaos and disorder. They have different views about 9/11, with shockingly large numbers of Russians supporting “alternate” explanations of one of history’s most carefully studied and well-documented terrorist attacks. (I was recently asked what “theory” of the attacks I supported only to be told that it was “my opinion” after I noted that al-Qaeda was clearly and obviously responsible.) Even something as seemingly straightforward and non-political as a meteor strike attracted a range of bizarre theories and pseudo-scientific “explanations” like the onset of an alien invasion or the testing of a new American super weapon. These wacky ideas (“the aliens are attacking Siberia!” “The grand masons are responsible for 9/11!”) would be extremely funny if they didn’t represent such a tragic deficit of reason.


I’ve asked people about these notions. Particularly if they’re a bit bashful about the position they’re about to advocate, Russians will often highlight their country’s long track record of superstition and its history as a rural, peasant society. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard “we’re a superstitious people” as an explanation for some kind of seemingly nonsensical position. In contrast to Western Europe, Russia really did urbanize and become literate much later. This delayed development has left a lasting impression on popular consciousness and public attitudes.

But while there is clearly some truth to the idea that Russia’s unique cultural history renders it susceptible to conspiracies, explanations centered on the “Russian soul” strike me as a cop-out. Far more important than the legacy of peasant life or any kind of natural penchant for mysteriousness and inscrutability is the Soviet legacy of propaganda. The older generations here all grew up in an environment in which the government systematically manipulated information on a scale that is hard to fathom. Although you might expect that this would engender a healthy skepticism, it appears to have created an unhealthy over-reaction. Russians don’t just doubt the “official line.” Several expats here, like me, have observed that they seem to doubt everything.

Like many Americans, I used to think that these differences would recede with time, and that, as they traveled the world, got jobs, and got rich, Russians would eventually start to think more and more like us. After Ukraine and the Malaysia Airlines crash, I’m a lot less optimistic. Despite ditching communism and its call to world revolution, Russia appears to becoming more, not less, different from the United States. It doesn’t just have its own system; it now has its own facts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postev...rnate-reality/

[Tree Potato]

The FAA issued a NOTAM to prohibit US carriers from flying over the area now.

Due to recent events, this NOTAM prohibits all flight operations by US ooperators within the Simferopol (UKFV) and Dnepropetrovsk (UKDV) FIRS.

Special Notice to Airman (FDC_NOTAM) 4-2182 UKRAINE AIRSPACE PROHIBITION.pdf

http://content.govdelivery.com/attac...ROHIBITION.pdf

[SpNkid]

Repost from neighbour thread
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...210#post558210
Think there is the better place to post it.

Maybe somebody will be interested in the opinion of Donbass civilians about who's killing them. English subtitles.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/NE18iPQ1Euk Hard. Very 18+.

Very typical episode of air strike on dwelling houses in Snizhne city, which occurred on the eve of the crash with Boeing, in almost the same area. It strongly motivates to shoot down any aircraft in the sky, if there is a technical possibility, and if to assume that Boeing was shot down by rebels.

Probably this film will soon disappear from YouTube.

[akv]

Putin is clearly a turd, but the devil we know?

Is Putin Worse Than Stalin?

by Patrick J. Buchanan, July 25, 2014

In 1933, the Holodomor was playing out in Ukraine. After the “kulaks,” the independent farmers, had been liquidated in the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a genocidal famine was imposed on Ukraine through seizure of her food production. Estimates of the dead range from two to nine million souls.

Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who called reports of the famine “malignant propaganda,” won a Pulitzer for his mendacity.

In November 1933, during the Holodomor, the greatest liberal of them all, FDR, invited Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov to receive official U.S. recognition of his master Stalin’s murderous regime.

On August 1, 1991, just four months before Ukraine declared its independence of Russia, George H. W. Bush warned Kiev’s legislature:

“Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”

In short, Ukraine’s independence was never part of America’s agenda. From 1933 to 1991, it was never a U.S. vital interest. Bush I was against it.

When then did this issue of whose flag flies over Donetsk or Crimea become so crucial that we would arm Ukrainians to fight Russian-backed rebels and consider giving a NATO war guarantee to Kiev, potentially bringing us to war with a nuclear-armed Russia?

From FDR on, U.S. presidents have felt that America could not remain isolated from the rulers of the world’s largest nation.

Ike invited Khrushchev to tour the USA after he had drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. After Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba, JFK was soon calling for a new detente at American University.

Within weeks of Warsaw Pact armies crushing the Prague Spring in August 1968, LBJ was seeking a summit with Premier Alexei Kosygin.

After excoriating Moscow for the downing of KAL 007 in 1983, that old Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan was fishing for a summit meeting.

The point: Every president from FDR through George H. W. Bush, even after collisions with Moscow far more serious than this clash over Ukraine, sought to re-engage the men in the Kremlin.

Whatever we thought of the Soviet dictators who blockaded Berlin, enslaved Eastern Europe, put rockets in Cuba and armed Arabs to attack Israel, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush 1 all sought to engage Russia’s rulers.

Avoidance of a catastrophic war demanded engagement.

How then can we explain the clamor of today’s U.S. foreign policy elite to confront, isolate, and cripple Russia, and make of Putin a moral and political leper with whom honorable statesmen can never deal?

What has Putin done to rival the forced famine in Ukraine that starved to death millions, the slaughter of the Hungarian rebels or the Warsaw Pact’s crushing of Czechoslovakia?

In Ukraine, Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia, with a bloodless seizure of the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow has berthed its Black Sea fleet since the 18th century. This is routine Big Power geopolitics.

And though Putin put an army on Ukraine’s border, he did not order it to invade or occupy Luhansk or Donetsk. Does this really look like a drive to reassemble either the Russian Empire of the Romanovs or the Soviet Empire of Stalin that reached to the Elbe?

As for the downing of the Malaysian airliner, Putin did not order that. Sen. John Cornyn says U.S. intelligence has not yet provided any “smoking gun” that ties the missile-firing to Russia.

Intel intercepts seem to indicate that Ukrainian rebels thought they had hit an Antonov military transport plane.

Yet, today, the leading foreign policy voice of the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain, calls Obama’s White House “cowardly” for not arming the Ukrainians to fight the Russian-backed separatists.

But suppose Putin responded to the arrival of U.S. weapons in Kiev by occupying Eastern Ukraine. What would we do then?

John Bolton has the answer: Bring Ukraine into NATO.

Translation: The U.S. and NATO should go to war with Russia, if necessary, over Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, though no U.S. president has ever thought Ukraine itself was worth a war with Russia.

What motivates Putin seems simple and understandable. He wants the respect due a world power. He sees himself as protector of the Russians left behind in his “near abroad.” He relishes playing Big Power politics. History is full of such men.

He allows U.S. overflights to Afghanistan, cooperates in the P5+1 on Iran, helped us rid Syria of chemical weapons, launches our astronauts into orbit, collaborates in the war on terror and disagrees on Crimea and Syria.

But what motivates those on our side who seek every opportunity to restart the Cold War?

Is it not a desperate desire to appear once again Churchillian, once again heroic, once again relevant, as they saw themselves in the Cold War that ended so long ago?

Who is the real problem here?

http://townhall.com/columnists/patbu...talin-n1865666

[Mr Furious]

Soldiers and social media screw ups, Russian style - taking Instagram selfies from your BUK while on “exercises.” Ouch.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/do...sia-is-covertl

“A Russian soldier has posted pictures to Instagram that show him operating military equipment inside Ukraine, including manning a missile launcher system of the type used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.”

[LarryW]

God's speed, Team.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0G51XF20140805

(Reuters) - A small U.S. military team has arrived in Kiev to help investigate the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, the United States said on Tuesday, with more direct training support for Ukraine also possible.

The team of about 10 people - which includes special operations, logistics, communications and air planning personnel - will operate from the capital of Kiev and will not visit the crash site in the conflict area of eastern Ukraine.

Last week, the Pentagon announced it would notify Congress of plans to mount a $19 million program to train several units of Ukraine's National Guard in "internal defense". The request has not yet been approved by legislators.

Washington has a long-running military training relationship with Ukraine but has not sent service personnel to the country aside from its regular embassy presence since the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region by Russia in March.

U.S. European Command spokesman U.S. Navy Captain Gregory Hicks said the survey and assessment team would advise the U.S. Embassy in Kiev over possible U.S. support to the Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia in the MH17 investigation and recovery.

"The team would work in coordination with and support the FBI team already on the ground," he said. "They will not participate in actual recovery operations. The team will be in Kiev for as long as required in support of the overall U.S. contribution to the investigation."

The U.S. believes the Malaysian Boeing 777 was brought down by a Russian-supplied SA-11 missile in the hands of pro-Russian separatists, a charge both Moscow and the rebels deny.

The crash killed 298 passengers and crew, mostly Dutch, Australian and Malaysian.

The U.S. military training program - expected to begin next year providing congressional approval is forthcoming - effectively marks the resumption of a long-running training deal with Ukraine.

It will be conducted in western Ukraine far from the front line, officials say. Training itself will be conducted by the U.S. Army as well as the California National Guard, spokesman Admiral John Kirby said on Friday.

Kirby said the training will take place at Ukraine's international peacekeeping and security center where the U.S. has previously taken part in multilateral military exercises.

(Reporting by Peter Apps; Additional reporting by Missy Ryan, Editing by Bernard Orr)