Ukraine Thread

[Gilrandir]

In this instance, a prosecutor is going to find great difficulty in PROVING that the Russians were negligent/encouraging of the use of one of their missile systems by rebel forces to shoot down a civilian airliner. The provided the weapon, but how do you prove they were encouraging the rebels to use it indiscriminately?

I'll venture to repost my own post from the same thread.

I came across a very interesting article by the Russian war historian (and plane engineer by profession) Mark Solonin on why Buk was brought from Russia to Donbas.
He draws attention to some very curious facts about it.
1. Buk was not adequate for the tasks of bringing down Ukranian military planes. In MTW terms, it was like sending a Janissary heavy infantry unit to deal with a unit of peasants. Russian army is equipped with at least 4 self-propelled anti-aircraft missile systems (Osa, Tor, Tunguska and Pantsyr) whose range of fire is 8-12 km and altitude of fire - 5-6 km, which is more than enough to empty the sky from infrasonic Su-26 or as old as the hills transport plane An-26. Such systems total about 1,5 thousand units in the Russian army.
Buk, on the other hand, is a very expensive and much less numerous system whose range of fire is 35 km and altitude range - 22 km and which is able to hit targets moving at 2,6 sound velocity. It seems too overpowered and expensive for the tasks of countering Ukranian military aviation.
2. It seems strange that only one Buk was brought. It is against military routine procedures which don't measure weapon systems in units, but in detachments. The army commanders would think in regiments, companies, platoons, squadrons etc, but not in individual units.
3. The Buk came being accompanied by no transportation loading vehicle which means that it could use only four missiles it was equipped with.

All of those make him think that it was not an army operation. It looked more like special service scheme.

4. To reach its destination (which is 60 km from the border) it took the Buk 2 days and it made a circuit of 250 km with a prolonged stop in Donetsk. Being placed at the destination it could have hardly been meant to cover the separatists positions behind it since those positions where close to the Russian-Ukranian border, so the task could have easily (and quite safely) been achieved by placing the same Buk on the Russian side of the border.
5. Stopping in Donetsk it was waiting for the tanks of the separatists' Vostok detachment (as the intercepted communications between the separatists show). The tanks never came, so the Buk moved the way it did.
6. The route of the Russian passenger plane SU 2074 Moscow-Larnaca over Ukraine had been changed twice (on July 14 and 15) giving the fighting zone a birth to the east and to the west respectively. But on July 16 and 17 (when the Buk was out on the drive around Donetsk) the plane route was plotted in the direct line few km aside from the fighting zone.

In view of all these facts, Solonin hypothesizes that the Buk came to Ukraine with the initial purpose of bringing down the Russian passenger plane. To accuse Ukraine of it, it was to be done from the territory controlled by Ukraine. At that time there was no proper front line but rather the roads were controlled by checkpoints but off roads both parties' troops (and tracked military vehicles) could roam at will. So Vostok's tanks were to have escorted the Buk to the place where its range was enough to reach the plane and then escort the Buk back. Since the tanks didn't come and the Buk personnel by the end of the second day was "tired and nervous", to put it mildly (as the intercepted communications show they even "lost" one of their crew members and had to search for him), they just decided to shoot down at least something and go quickly back the hell out of Donbas.

These considerations may be considered if one wished to prove the said intentions by Russia.