UKC

So I watch with horror the pictures of the airliner coming down over The Ukraine, partly because I am about to fly not too far away from there in a week or so.

The thing which strikes me is the point of this. We have a pro-Russia group fighting government forces about local territory. They are fighting each other for local-ish reasons. Assuming, as its likely to be, that the flight was grounded due to a Russian (made or supplied) missile what on earth does this act prove, what message is it sending out and what is it hoping to achieve? Could it be a catastrophic mistake?

Could this lead to an escalation? What are the national governments of those killed in cold blood likely to do? What can they do? Are their hands tied due to diplomatic pressures? Could a non-Russian military intervention be a likely reaction and what would the implications be?

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=592794

seems sily to have two threads

In reply to Doug:

Thanks Doug, although I was asking very specific questions.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

If it was indeed shot down (and that seems far from settled as far as I can see), then I can see no political or military advantage for the pro Russian separatist to purposefully shoot down a civilian airliner, so you could surmise that it is essentially a terrible mistake.

They have been targeting Ukraine military jets and transport planes in recent months, and have shot down 4 or 5 I believe, although none at anything like the altitude of the airliner. So they have 'form', so to speak, but obviously they would need some fairly sophisticated weapons to target something at 32,000ft. Perhaps if such weapons have been supplied to the Separatists by the Russians, its possible to believe these operating them might not be as well trained as they might otherwise be, and targeted the airliner by mistake?

Listening to a piece on the radio this morning, apparently there has been controls in place to prevent any civilian airliners from flying below 32,000ft across this bit of the Ukraine for some time, but flights do cross the area on a regular basis, so why has this only happened now? And it seems to call into question the wisdom of crossing war zones entirely, when such weapons might be on the ground.