Quote:
Originally Posted by LewisM
the perpetrators believing the aircraft WAS military, until they were told it's true identity.
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That's not credible. It was normal for several dozen civilian (international) planes to fly over Ukraine daily and the assholes that did this knew that - they'd all be visible on military radar as plain as the proverbial. And following well established routes, cruising in linear trajectories at 10,000 m altitude it's pretty obvious they aren't military.
IMHO this was a blatant attempt to do two things:
a) harm Ukraine financially, by causing all international air traffic to be diverted away. The point is that the airlines pay countries like Ukraine to fly in their airspace, and was a nice income for them for free. Well, the attack has achieved this much.
b) The Cold War mentality is very much alive and kicking in Russia and the hardline lunatics are itching to see how much they can get away with before the west will retaliate in any way.
It's clear the west wasn't going to get involved in Ukraine, whatever happens, but by murdering civilians on an international plane flight it's hard to see how the west can sit and do nothing.