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The company that makes those missiles was one of those effected by yesterday's sanctions.
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Uh oh. Ukrainians have audio with two Russian GRU officers talking about what their group did. They thought they shot down a military cargo plane and realized they fucked up when they found out it was a commercial airliner.Comment
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Fox news just did a 4 minute piece on it....someone fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked up!Originally posted by sc281 View PostComment
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Flight MH17: Did Russian rebels shoot down Malaysia Airlines passenger plane by mistake?
Jul 17, 2014 19:45
By Steve Robson
Reports suggest Igor Girkin, a military commander with the self-proclaimed 'Donetsk People's Republic', had warning Ukrainian armed forces "not to fly in our sky"
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Suspicions: Commander Igor Girkin made claims on his social media page suggesting rebels shot the plane down
Russian rebels may have shot down the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet killing 295 people after mistaking it for a Ukrainian plane, it has been claimed.
Posts on a social media page belonging to Igor Girkin (also known as Strelkov), a top military commander of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic", suggest the separatists believed they had shot down a Ukrainian military aircraft.
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"We just downed an An-26 near Torez. It is down near the Progress mine," said Girkin's VK page (VK is the Russian version of Facebook).
The An-26 is a widely-used transport aircraft and rebels claimed to have shot another one down in eastern Ukraine last month, killing 49 government servicemen.
"We had warned (the Ukrainian armed forces) not to fly in 'our sky'.
"And here is a video confirming that a 'bird fell'," he added, linking to a video of the aftermath of the disaster.
Nine Britons were tonight reported to have perished when the Malaysia Airlines passenger shot was apparently shot down over Ukraine.
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Flight MH17 - a Boeing 777-200 travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 295 people on board - was in transit over the war-torn region when it disappeared from radar screens.
Graphic images showed a pall of smoke, charred wreckage and bodies at the crash scene in eastern Ukraine.
The country has been torn apart by internal strife since the overthrow of the Moscow-backed regime of Viktor Yanukovych, with Russian backed separatists already accused by the authorities in Kiev of shooting down military jets with missiles supplied by Russia.
The Ukrainian government immediately blamed the separatists with President Petro Poroshenko declaring the "armed forces of Ukraine did not take action against any airborne targets".
Anton Gerashenko, an aide to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, said on his Facebook page that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet over when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher, a Soviet era surface-to-air missile system capable of taking down a high altitude aircraft.
A similar launcher was reportedly seen by journalists near the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne earlier today.
But a spokesman for the rebels said the plane must have been shot down by Ukrainian government troops.
The incident sparked a fresh international crisis and is bound to put more pressure on Russia to rein in the rebels.
In the aftermath of the plane's destruction Russian president Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barack Obama spoke by phone.
Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, said: "I am shocked by reports that an MH plane crashed. We are launching an immediate investigation."
The jet would have been flying at high altitude on an intercontinental flight that took it over the region.
As the drama unfolded, several other passenger jets were flying through Ukrainian airspace on one of the main routes from Europe to Asia for air traffic.
Today's calamity will prompt questions about why the route was still being used given previous incidents.
Tonight, the Department for Transport in London said flights were now being diverted.
A DfT spokesman said: "Flights already airborne are being routed around the area by air traffic control in the region. Pilots around the world have been advised to plan routes that avoid the area by Eurocontrol, the European organisation for the safety of air navigation."
Airliner tracking sites seemed to indicated that traffic was now steering clear of Ukrainian airspace.
On Wednesday night the Ukrainian authorities said one of their fighter jets was shot down by an air-to-air missile from a Russian plane and Ukrainian troops were fired upon by missiles from a village inside Russia.
The episodes add to what Ukraine says is mounting evidence that Moscow is directly supporting separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine who have substantial quantities of powerful weapons.
Ukraine said a military transport plane was shot down on Monday by a missile fired from Russian territory. Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said he had "unconditional evidence" that Russia was involved in downing that aircraft.
In a tweet Malaysia Airlines said: "Malaysia Airlines has lost contact of MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow."
The incident brings tragedy to Malaysia Airlines for the second time this year.
In March, one of its jets disappeared with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board in one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time.
It would not be the first time a civilian airliner has been mistakenly shot down.
In 1988, an Iran Air flight from Tehran to Dubai was shot down by the US warship USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf. All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died.
In 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 from New York to Seoul via Anchorage was shot down by a Soviet military jet near Sakhalin Island in the East Sea. All 269 passengers and crew were killed. The Soviets initially denied knowledge of the incident but later admitted responsibility, claiming that the aircraft was on a spy mission.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We are aware of the reports and are urgently working to establish what has happened."
Boeing, who manufactured the aircraft, said: "We are aware of reports on MH17. We're gathering more information.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with those on board MH17, as well as their families and loved ones. We stand ready to provide assistance."
Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on FacebookComment
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boom goes the dynamite! That was the Ukrainian's evidence right there!"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." -Benjamin Franklin
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." -Alexander Fraser TytlerComment
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Damn....
SYDNEY (AP) — In an almost incomprehensible twist of fate, an Australian woman who lost her brother in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 learned on Friday that her stepdaughter was on the plane shot down over Ukraine.
Kaylene Mann's brother Rod Burrows and sister-in-law Mary Burrows were on board Flight 370 when it vanished in March. On Friday, Mann found out that her stepdaughter, Maree Rizk, was killed along with 297 others on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which U.S. intelligence authorities believe was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.
"It's just brought everyone, everything back," said Greg Burrows, Mann's brother. "It's just ... ripped our guts again."
Burrows said his family was struggling to understand how they could be struck by such horrible luck on two separate occasions with the same airline.
"She just lost a brother and now a stepdaughter, so..." he said of his sister, his voice trailing off.
Rizk and her husband Albert, of Melbourne, were returning home from a four-week holiday in Europe, said Phil Lithgow, president of the Sunbury Football Club, with which the family was heavily involved. Albert, a real estate agent, was a member of the club's committee, Maree was a volunteer in the canteen and their son, James, plays on the club's team.
"They were very lovely people," Lithgow said. "You wouldn't hear a bad word about them — very generous with their time in the community, very community-minded, and just really very entertaining people to be with."
The club members planned to wear black armbands and observe a minute of silence to honor the Rizks at their game on Saturday, Lithgow said.
Despite the twin tragedies, Burrows said he holds nothing against Malaysia Airlines.
"Nobody could predict they were going to get shot down," he said. "That was out of their hands."
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Putin is up to ass cheeks in trouble nowComment
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Originally posted by talisman View Post
That's horrible
. I also saw an article yesterday that some flight attendant who swapped shifts off of MH370 has a wife who i guess swapped out of her MH17 flight. Sounds like they need to retire.
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Originally posted by lowthreeohz View PostThat's horrible. I also saw an article yesterday that some flight attendant who swapped shifts off of MH370 has a wife who i guess swapped out of her MH17 flight. Sounds like they need to retire.
Crazy. Just read another article that a guy posted a pic of the plane while boarding and posted it to FB with the caption "Just in case it goes missing, this is what it looks like."Comment
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Ain't nothing going to be done. No one is going to war over this. There's no leaders in the world that's going to "man up" to facing Putin.Originally posted by Zfan View Post"Self-government won't work without self-discipline." - Paul HarveyComment
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If we had a good potus who would honor treaties he would send the 200 marines or whatever going to iraq and send them to ukraine just as a show of force.Originally posted by GhostTX View Post
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There is video of the missile carrier driving into position, I'm guessing there is probably video of the launch. Rumor is that the "rebels" just took delivery of a new missile system capable of taking down an airliner at cruising altitude.
This isn't the first one shot down over Ukraine either
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King Obama is addressing his court. They have determined Russian separatists did fire a surface to air missile at the airliner and brought it down. They know who fired it and why it was fired, all of them have been identified. Obama's response to this is to conduct an investigation of this solved crime, and then continued to speak for 10 minutes about irrelevant nonsense.
So to summarize: Obama's response to Russia shooting down a 777 is nothing.Last edited by CJ; 07-18-2014, 10:08 AM."When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." -Benjamin Franklin
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." -Alexander Fraser TytlerComment
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