The article mentions that they knew the missile itself was a Russian one but not from where on the ground it was fired. The article says that the investigation team now concluded that the missile was also fired from a location that was controlled by Russian rebels (at that point).
I just don't understand how can pilot be so reckless to fly over known warzone?
Hey I'm not saying it's their own fault, but please stop telling me that it's "safe" because it's not. It was a known warzone.
Todays example:
Virgin Atlantic, Air France and Emirates will no longer allow its planes to fly over Iraq due to concerns about the dangers posed by Islamic militants.
Hundreds of other planes did too, because no authority tracked by airlines reported the area as an active conflict zone --- moreover, among the world's conflict zones, there aren't many in which an airliner flying at altitude would be at risked. The unique situation here is that Russia had deployed extremely sophisticated surface-to-air batteries.
> The unique situation here is that Russia had deployed extremely sophisticated surface-to-air batteries.
Single launcher. Full battery has 4 launchers and a significantly more sophisticated radar. Arguably that radar would have helped to sort between Ukrainian observation plane and civilian Boeing.
Are you for real? There's war zones all over the world, usually that doesn't mean shooting down a passenger flight 10km high, for which you need specialized equipment, not just a random shoulder carry rocket. Until the incident, airspace at civilian cruising altitudes was free and open in Ukraine. Hint: space is 3d, lower levels were closed in various places.
On July 14th 2014, just three days before the MH17 incident, an Antonov AN-26 Ukrainian military transport plane was hit at 21 000 feet altitude, so there was a strong indication that SAMs were available to the seperatists. According to the Dutch Safety Board, the airspace should have been closed [1].
Thanks for the link, hit at 21000 feet just earlier does change the risk profile, but then again, it's hard for the Safety Board to come to any other conclusion post the facts.
AN-26 was hit with a MANPADS which cannot target altitude at which civilian airliners fly. No one at the time thought that Russia was crazy enough to supply the rebels with BUKs.
While the previous aircraft were downed by MANPADS or AA, the AN-26 in question was flying at an altitude only reachable by a SAM. At the bottom of this article [1] is a good overview of the shot-down aircraft over east Ukraine in 2014.
You need state sponsored military equipment to shoot down a 10km high flying airplane. You can't do this with your homebuilt rocket launcher.
Up to this incident nobody was thinking that a state could be reckless enough to target civilian planes. Or lend their military equipment to people reckless enough. This has changed since then.
And a bunch of other airlines are not diverting from Iraq because they disagree about the danger.
At the time of the MH17 shootdown, some airlines were already diverting around eastern Ukraine, and many others were not.
A reasonable assessment of the danger was made, and they decided that it was safe enough to continue flying there. That assessment turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't mean the it was "reckless."
Everything is a calculated risk. Your question is equivalent to asking a crashed driver how they could have been so reckless to drive that day.
In hindsight, we tend to fall into the trap that the actual outcome was the correct/fated outcome. That we should have predicted it and known better.
A weather forecast that posted a 5% chance of rain on a sunny day is not wrong. No matter if it rains or is sunny, the probability was still just 5%, but we often assume that if the forecast was "correct" it should be 0% or 100%. That's not how it works. A coin toss is always 50%, even after the fact.
To me the title sounds like they just mean the missile was made in Russia, which was obvious from the start. (Even if the Ukranians had been responsible, their missiles were still made in Russia!)
What they actually mean is that the missile was transported in from Russia shortly before the shootdown, and the launcher and remaining missiles went back to Russia not long after. But yes, the wording of the title is way too vague.
The way I read it is that it's more than it was made in Russia, that was pretty obvious, the title implies that they were brought from the Russian stockpile rather than the Ukrainian one.
I'm not sure which title you're commenting on, but if it's the current HN title, note that it's been changed. It previously matched the title of the linked article, which is "MH17 missile 'came from Russia', Dutch-led investigators say."
It doesn't actually matter whether someone moved the missile a bit outside of Russia to fire it and took it back to Russia after the fact or did it from Russia.
No, because it's never been a point of contention that the missile was fired from within (some part of) Ukrainian territory. What people have been generating noise about is the question of whether the missile came from Russia (before being launched) or from Ukraine's own stockpiles (being as Ukraine did have missiles of a similar make and description, apparently).
> was fired from to a field in territory controlled by Russian-backed rebels.
> "...that came from the Russian Federation," chief Dutch police investigator Wilbert Paulissen said
I think the wording 'territory of the Russian Federation' is not best choice. Report says it was fired from Ukraine, 10 km from border. It implies that donbas is already part of russia.
I agree. These are two separate assertions: fired from location X, and "came" (originated or transported) from location Y but that could be read as "fired" too.
The dutch led investigation has been a joke from the start, the previous report they released was submitted to Russia for screening prior to publication, they had them remove any references to this being an carried out by Russian soldiers operating in Eastern Ukraine as all evidence to date clearly shows.
National courts first, then European Court of Human Rights if they will not win in national courts.
Based on this report relatives of victims can sue in ECHR all involved parties, including both Russian Federation (for providing military equipment to separatists) and Ukraine (for not closing air space for civil flights).
Sanctions are a dirty western political trick just so the politicians here can say "we did something".
Sanctions are useless!
Do you know who they affect? Regular people ONLY. Who have no say in politics anymore over there (elections are rigged).
Facts:
1. Top Russian government officials transferred their assets to Europe / USA over the years. They have their families and kids living abroad and going to European/American universities.
2. They have assets offshore not affected by russian currency fluctuations. Most have dual citizenships.
If you want to hit them hard: arrest their wealth offshore; kick out their families from usa/europe.
Why is that not happening? Why are we still allowing illegal wealth transfer through use of offshores?
Why is prime-minister of Russia allowed to own a $20mil apartment in London?
The point is to ruin Russia to the point they become North Korea and cannot afford the upkeep for it's military.
Regular people? Boo-fucking-hoo. Maybe if they get off their asses and stop the Putin's insanity...but who are we kidding?
People there dream of good old soviet imperium
Ruining russian military? You mean rusting tanks from the 60's or expired rockets from cold war era? The military can not compete with the west anymore.
People there stopped dreaming in the 90's when the ugly side of "new Russia" showed its face. As i said election process is rigged, many folks there want change. please, do not believe 75%+ public support ratings spewed out by state propaganda machines. they are simply untrue.
Lots of folks are ashamed of conflict with Ukraine but unfortunately there is no political and social platform that allows to do anything about this. Anything thats against the state agenda gets nipped in the bud.
I've actually been to Russia, through Petersburg, all the way to Solovetsky island, spent around a month there. I'd say that sure, people are nice on a personal level, but some topics were off limits because it would end badly.
While i know that the russian military has issues with equipment that is literally falling apart, let's not kid ourselves the west doesn't have similar issues.
ICBM's don't need any contemporary electronics to be perfectly deadly.
And let's not forget that Russia right now is actively developing modern weapon systems perfectly capable of taking on anything the west has to offer, some of them are slated to be markedly better (For e.g. PAK FA, if they actually manage to produce it in meaningful numbers, makes the F-coat-hanger-abortion-35 completely irrelevant) And air power is disproportionally effective in conventional war.
So, my point is - if Russia literally goes bankrupt, it can no longer afford precision tools, asic chips, expertise, modern milling machines, exotic materials, etc.
This is not cold war, where you could literally hand solder computers. (Yes, I know no one put's 22nm chips in 5th gen planes, but the point still stands)
There are only 185 F-22's and the lines are dismantled. If you are going to produce only F35's at a ratio almost 10:1 compared to F22...
Then doesn't the fact that PAK FA is supposed to go agains vastly superior (to F35 for sure) F22 make you agree with me logically?
If you understand who runs the country and how they operate then you will understand that they do not desire any serious conflicts with the west. West - is where they retire, keep their money and often families. They are not about to shoot themselves in the foot.
>Ruining russian military? You mean rusting tanks from the 60's or expired rockets from cold war era? The military can not compete with the west anymore.
It's still strong enough to grab Crimea, support the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, and intervene very effectively to rescue the regime in Syria. I for one would be very glad if its military finally collapsed.
On a deeper level, the Russian people have never figured out how to organize themselves into a modern, democratic nation, and they love authoritarian rulers like Putin. I mean, look what happened when they had some freedom under Yeltsin, they blew it completely.
Strong enough to grab Crimea from Ukraine? Its like stealing candy from a kid. Ukraine's military is in even worse shape. Syria is not exactly super power either.
The military machine over there can spit out "super weapon in development" stories all day - the truth is, nothing meaningful or threatening is happening, the funds for any meaningful development work are being stolen by the higher ups and channeled to the western banks through offshores (see "panama papers"). How do you think they buy mega yachts and houses in London, Spain, Greece?
Under Yeltsin there was no freedom (in fact there was never any freedom in Russia) - there was complete lawlessness. USSR fell and nothing was holding the thugs behind anymore. In the 90's thugs (+ ex-KGB) took over all business and then merged with and migrated into government.
Today thugs (KGB is a glorified mafia family) are running the entire country - its simple as that.
Russian people never had a word to say about any of this. Those who tried - got blown up or shot in the back.
I agree Russia can never become a military superpower like it was, but its military is still strong enough to cause lots of problems in the world.
>Under Yeltsin there was no freedom (in fact there was never any freedom in Russia) - there was complete lawlessness. USSR fell and nothing was holding the thugs behind anymore. In the 90's thugs (+ ex-KGB) took over all business and then merged with and migrated into government.
Your comment is a good example of what I am talking about. Under Yeltsin there was little control by the government, so the population was free to organize and promote positive change. Instead they just let things stay bad, and then when a strong leader came along to eliminate the chaos, they give him their full support.
I have read a lot about Russia, and one reason Russians never organize from the bottom up is that Russians view themselves as an unruly people, and so they believe they need an authoritarian leader to tell them what to do and make them do it.
Another problem is that every Russian has very low trust in anyone outside their immediate circle, so they can't form good organizations, like civil society groups or an effective liberal political party.
All this is deeply embedded in Russian culture, as a consequence of many centuries of authoritarian leaders. What Russians need to do is study political philosophy, history and other cultures, and learn what they need to do differently.
Oh, and by the way, Putin has you exactly where he wants you. He would like you to be a supporter, but if people like you are instead cynical and don't try to understand what is needed for positive change, then he is free to stay in power for the rest of his life.
>> Under Yeltsin ... population was free to organize and promote positive change.
I see that you have some illusions about that period, perhaps due to the fact that you could only see it through the lens of the western media. No, population was not free. The gangs controlled the country. If they did not like what you had to say - you were killed on the spot, right out in the open in the daylight. Simple as that. People lived in fear through the 90's. Fear of making ANY move: business - would be taken away from you by the gangs, or politics - ruled by apparatchiki with criminal connections who took you out if they did not like the way you looked that day.
I disagree with your blanket statement that Russians need (or desire) an authoritarian leader. Not all Russians are the same, far from it. (Its similar to going in the middle of USA and concluding that all Americans are god worshiping red necks or something like that.) There are (and were) a lot of progressive thinkers that are capable of organizing an opposition. The issue is - they are forced out of the country by the state (best case scenario) once they gain any traction or are eliminated in one way or another.
The choice for many russians is simple - do i want to suffer physical/mental abuse by the state, fight the system and stay in the country or am i better of immigrating? the choice is simple, especially if you have/want a family.
Russian immigration has been going on for over 100 years now for that very reason.
>>Oh, and by the way, Putin has you exactly where he wants you. He would like you to be a supporter, but if people like you are instead cynical and don't try to understand what is needed for positive change, then he is free to stay in power for the rest of his life.
No Putin does not want me to be where i am now ;) yes im cynical but i do know what is needed for a positive change. there is one little thing - i do not want to waste my life on fighting that system "for the good cause". Life is too short to spend it on "nari".
You want to arrest all assets of powerful Russians offshore? I hope you are ready to face pissed off Shell or Mitsubishi CEOs, after their assets in Russia are arrested too.
In addition, you would be playing how Russian government want you: they told their oligarchs last year, that the time to repatriate everything is now (2015). You would be awarding those who listened to that advice and penalize those who didn't. What could possibly go wrong? ;)
of course its not that simple. simply because this is how corruption operates in the west as well. they use similar channels and ways to hide/legitimize questionable profits.
Igor Shuvalov, officially worth half a billion dollars. Has properties all over europe, his wife flies their dogs (corgis) all over europe for dog shows ... on a private bombardier business jet... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695649/Vladimir-Put...
nice to be a pro-P. politician in Russia... sanctions somehow skipped out on this poor bloke...
Please don't comment like this. This site is here for us to learn and to gratify our intellectual curiosity, not to trap fellow users or engage in flamewars.
Ok my bad, to me Medvedev and Putin are 1 person. So ok Shuvalov is technically a deputy prime-minister or next in line. Does it really make a difference? Is he now allowed to steal? Medvedev his boss has done pretty good for him self as well....
It depends. One possible way is to request FSB to investigate based on presented evidence (illegal supplies of military equipment are their scope of responsibility and we do know that these supplies were not authorized in accordance to Russian laws). If they will not start investigation, then report to the Office of Russian Prosecutor's General. If prosecutors reject the case, go to local court and then up to the Supreme Court. If no success there, go to the European Court of Human Rights and sue Russian Federation. If Russia loses in ECHR, Ministry of Finances will be responsible for paying damages. If (very unlikely, but possible) FSB agrees to investigate and finds the responsible people, likely, it will also find that they were on duty when supplies of equipment took place and, thus, Ministry of Finances of Russian Federation will be responsible for paying damages.
Also that the missile was transported from Russia shortly before the shootdown, and the launcher and remaining missiles were transported back to Russia. They mean "came from" in a more specific manner than just that it was made there.
That was from social media images that are not news. It was reported on at the time. I'm not sure what's new here other than a two years too late rubber stamp of eyewitness reports.
What's new is that the statement is now based on a great deal of hard evidence and investigation, rather than a couple of pictures and some internet commentators.
What a purposely misleading title - it makes you think it was fired from Russia as today people just read the titles! BBC just lost all its credibility for servicing geopolitical agendas!
Well the US kills tens of civilians (like in the recent bombings of the "coalition") with drones or bombers - there's nothing in the headlines with such rhetoric, and it's all justified and civilized. When our "friends" the Saudis and the Qatari kill thousands in Yemen - it's fine. When Turkey violates a sovereign nation and performs a military operation in Syria - it's fine. When Kiev kills thousands of people in East Ukraine, when they shell orphanages, schools, malls, residential areas - it's all just and okay. This hypocrisy is sickening! Why would the Russia and pro-Russian rebels down an airplane that will do nothing but hurt their agenda?! And how can an airplane chose to fly above areas with an ongoing military conflict?!
Doesn't sound like a possible a reason for me. Conflict in the region has existed for some time, so place for photo cameras focusing was well known.
> is kept secret so as not to disclose surveillance capabilities.
It's not a news that we are being watched, so this reason also doesn't sound reasonable for me.
Any other reason? May they have something to hide?
As I understood many of the so called evidences are based on the youtube movies taken by the cell phones by random people. So that should not be a problem to fake such kind of evidences. Also treating google earth photos like an evidence sounds funny for me.
a) You cannot get high-resolution imagery from geostationary satellites. It comes from low earth orbit spacecraft.
These, by the very nature of their orbit, cannot remain fixed over one place; they move relative to the ground below and once past it, will not be back until they've completed an orbit.
This, then, means that someone will have to prioritize what areas to investigate and at what times; satellite orbits can be changed, but that is _extremely_ costly, as you need to expend fuel - and there's no simple way to refuel; spend it all, and you need to launch another satellite.
So - maybe the US found that something other than Russian-backed militias destabilizing Ukraine warranted their attention. Say, IS or al-Qaeda - and focussed their attention elsewhere.
b) It is not news that you are being watched.
It may, however, be news when a satellite is watching; perhaps the US piggybacks surveillance gear on commercial satellites, for instance - they couldn't reveal satellite imagery without anybody and his dog being able to figure out which satellite took the photo.
Or - the quality of the photos may be much better than anticipated.
Or, for that matter - maybe the US doesn't want to stick this to Russia as hard as they could; perhaps they do not want to find out what the world community would do once it is proven beyond any doubt that Russia gambled that they could destabilize Ukraine at no cost to themselves, only to find that the rebels and their -ahem- advisors of undisclosed origin promptly escalated the conflict by committing mass murder by incompetence, ignorance or both.
As for your last point, I don't quite catch it. Is the lack of obviously faked 'evidence' evidence that someone is having something to hide?
Publically and commercially available imaginary (google earth, DigitalGlobe, etc.) just couldn’t see anything.
They only sense some visible light, and/or near IR (a.k.a. short-wave infrared). You can view some specs there: https://www.digitalglobe.com/resources/satellite-information The clouds are completely opaque in those spectrum, so the land below clouds is completely invisible from those satellites. And the segment of the missile trail above the clouds is very volatile, there’re strong winds there.
Nothing can be seen on those images. And in the video uploaded by Netherlands’ public prosecution office, they told satellite imaginary between 16 and 21 of July is unusable, because clouds.
I'm not familiar with such kind of stuff, the point is - I'm sure they do have strong evidences but for some reason those evidences are not yet revealed.
The problem with that, no one except the US military and government knows for sure, whether they have far IR aka thermal imaging sensors on their satellites, or they don’t.
Fortunately, there’s a solid body of evidence even without that secret data.
It includes a lot of photos, videos, intercepted phone calls, and other related data. The video is official, meaning the investigation team has evidences backing every statement made.
To cut to the chase, the study confirms what was fairly obvious:
- Yes, a Russian missile shot down a commercial aircraft.
- Yes, Ukrainian separatists (Russian supported) controlled the area.
So what's the outcome? Putin could care less and doesn't answer to any authority that can apply restraint or collect damages. So what does this change?
Families of victims can sue. Like with Yukos case, foreign Russian assets can be arrested to pay for damages. It will probably take many, many years and maybe one of future Russian governments will decide that it is better to close that case. There where so many victims that its almost certain that some families will keep pushing this case forever.
The official website of the "Openbaar Ministerie" (Dutch Public Prosecution Service) contains a press release, including some animations and intercepted calls [1] as well as a page with documents from the presentation [2].
97 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadHey I'm not saying it's their own fault, but please stop telling me that it's "safe" because it's not. It was a known warzone.
Todays example:
Virgin Atlantic, Air France and Emirates will no longer allow its planes to fly over Iraq due to concerns about the dangers posed by Islamic militants.
Single launcher. Full battery has 4 launchers and a significantly more sophisticated radar. Arguably that radar would have helped to sort between Ukrainian observation plane and civilian Boeing.
[1] http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/dutch-safety-board-u...
[1] http://airheadsfly.com/2014/07/15/ukraine-latest-an-26-downi...
Up to this incident nobody was thinking that a state could be reckless enough to target civilian planes. Or lend their military equipment to people reckless enough. This has changed since then.
Iran Air was shot down by US Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
At the time of the MH17 shootdown, some airlines were already diverting around eastern Ukraine, and many others were not.
A reasonable assessment of the danger was made, and they decided that it was safe enough to continue flying there. That assessment turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't mean the it was "reckless."
In hindsight, we tend to fall into the trap that the actual outcome was the correct/fated outcome. That we should have predicted it and known better.
A weather forecast that posted a 5% chance of rain on a sunny day is not wrong. No matter if it rains or is sunny, the probability was still just 5%, but we often assume that if the forecast was "correct" it should be 0% or 100%. That's not how it works. A coin toss is always 50%, even after the fact.
What they actually mean is that the missile was transported in from Russia shortly before the shootdown, and the launcher and remaining missiles went back to Russia not long after. But yes, the wording of the title is way too vague.
Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> "...that came from the Russian Federation," chief Dutch police investigator Wilbert Paulissen said
I think the wording 'territory of the Russian Federation' is not best choice. Report says it was fired from Ukraine, 10 km from border. It implies that donbas is already part of russia.
The investigation concludes that the missile was transported from Russia to the rebel-controlled territory, where it was then fired.
being down voted for what?
None of what i said is remotely controversial.
Im not sure who the defendant should be on the Russian side, the ministry of defense?
Which court?
Track down who gave the order and sue them! Does not matter who it is - P. or his buddies.
Otherwise what is the point of this "investigation"?
What needs to happen is proper legal process and some heads need to roll at the Russian ministry of defense.
Based on this report relatives of victims can sue in ECHR all involved parties, including both Russian Federation (for providing military equipment to separatists) and Ukraine (for not closing air space for civil flights).
..so it is likely to be a nothing.
Sanctions are useless!
Do you know who they affect? Regular people ONLY. Who have no say in politics anymore over there (elections are rigged).
Facts:
1. Top Russian government officials transferred their assets to Europe / USA over the years. They have their families and kids living abroad and going to European/American universities. 2. They have assets offshore not affected by russian currency fluctuations. Most have dual citizenships.
If you want to hit them hard: arrest their wealth offshore; kick out their families from usa/europe.
Why is that not happening? Why are we still allowing illegal wealth transfer through use of offshores?
Why is prime-minister of Russia allowed to own a $20mil apartment in London?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3182636/Vladimir-Put...
Whats sanctions? Against who? Its a big joke!
People there stopped dreaming in the 90's when the ugly side of "new Russia" showed its face. As i said election process is rigged, many folks there want change. please, do not believe 75%+ public support ratings spewed out by state propaganda machines. they are simply untrue.
Lots of folks are ashamed of conflict with Ukraine but unfortunately there is no political and social platform that allows to do anything about this. Anything thats against the state agenda gets nipped in the bud.
It's still strong enough to grab Crimea, support the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, and intervene very effectively to rescue the regime in Syria. I for one would be very glad if its military finally collapsed.
On a deeper level, the Russian people have never figured out how to organize themselves into a modern, democratic nation, and they love authoritarian rulers like Putin. I mean, look what happened when they had some freedom under Yeltsin, they blew it completely.
The military machine over there can spit out "super weapon in development" stories all day - the truth is, nothing meaningful or threatening is happening, the funds for any meaningful development work are being stolen by the higher ups and channeled to the western banks through offshores (see "panama papers"). How do you think they buy mega yachts and houses in London, Spain, Greece?
Under Yeltsin there was no freedom (in fact there was never any freedom in Russia) - there was complete lawlessness. USSR fell and nothing was holding the thugs behind anymore. In the 90's thugs (+ ex-KGB) took over all business and then merged with and migrated into government.
Today thugs (KGB is a glorified mafia family) are running the entire country - its simple as that.
Russian people never had a word to say about any of this. Those who tried - got blown up or shot in the back.
>Under Yeltsin there was no freedom (in fact there was never any freedom in Russia) - there was complete lawlessness. USSR fell and nothing was holding the thugs behind anymore. In the 90's thugs (+ ex-KGB) took over all business and then merged with and migrated into government.
Your comment is a good example of what I am talking about. Under Yeltsin there was little control by the government, so the population was free to organize and promote positive change. Instead they just let things stay bad, and then when a strong leader came along to eliminate the chaos, they give him their full support.
I have read a lot about Russia, and one reason Russians never organize from the bottom up is that Russians view themselves as an unruly people, and so they believe they need an authoritarian leader to tell them what to do and make them do it.
Another problem is that every Russian has very low trust in anyone outside their immediate circle, so they can't form good organizations, like civil society groups or an effective liberal political party.
All this is deeply embedded in Russian culture, as a consequence of many centuries of authoritarian leaders. What Russians need to do is study political philosophy, history and other cultures, and learn what they need to do differently.
Oh, and by the way, Putin has you exactly where he wants you. He would like you to be a supporter, but if people like you are instead cynical and don't try to understand what is needed for positive change, then he is free to stay in power for the rest of his life.
I see that you have some illusions about that period, perhaps due to the fact that you could only see it through the lens of the western media. No, population was not free. The gangs controlled the country. If they did not like what you had to say - you were killed on the spot, right out in the open in the daylight. Simple as that. People lived in fear through the 90's. Fear of making ANY move: business - would be taken away from you by the gangs, or politics - ruled by apparatchiki with criminal connections who took you out if they did not like the way you looked that day.
I disagree with your blanket statement that Russians need (or desire) an authoritarian leader. Not all Russians are the same, far from it. (Its similar to going in the middle of USA and concluding that all Americans are god worshiping red necks or something like that.) There are (and were) a lot of progressive thinkers that are capable of organizing an opposition. The issue is - they are forced out of the country by the state (best case scenario) once they gain any traction or are eliminated in one way or another.
The choice for many russians is simple - do i want to suffer physical/mental abuse by the state, fight the system and stay in the country or am i better of immigrating? the choice is simple, especially if you have/want a family.
Russian immigration has been going on for over 100 years now for that very reason.
>>Oh, and by the way, Putin has you exactly where he wants you. He would like you to be a supporter, but if people like you are instead cynical and don't try to understand what is needed for positive change, then he is free to stay in power for the rest of his life.
No Putin does not want me to be where i am now ;) yes im cynical but i do know what is needed for a positive change. there is one little thing - i do not want to waste my life on fighting that system "for the good cause". Life is too short to spend it on "nari".
You want to arrest all assets of powerful Russians offshore? I hope you are ready to face pissed off Shell or Mitsubishi CEOs, after their assets in Russia are arrested too.
In addition, you would be playing how Russian government want you: they told their oligarchs last year, that the time to repatriate everything is now (2015). You would be awarding those who listened to that advice and penalize those who didn't. What could possibly go wrong? ;)
nice to be a pro-P. politician in Russia... sanctions somehow skipped out on this poor bloke...
"They also narrowed down the area it was fired from to a field in territory controlled by Russian-backed rebels."
Little doubt has there been that the weapon used was made in Russia.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/28/mh370-pilot-fl...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/mh370-disappearanc...
If you think this article detracts from the site rather than enrich it, use the "flag" option.
a) Relevant coverage does not exist. (I find it unlikely that full real-time coverage of the globe is available.)
b) Coverage exists, but is kept secret so as not to disclose surveillance capabilities.
Doesn't sound like a possible a reason for me. Conflict in the region has existed for some time, so place for photo cameras focusing was well known.
> is kept secret so as not to disclose surveillance capabilities.
It's not a news that we are being watched, so this reason also doesn't sound reasonable for me.
Any other reason? May they have something to hide?
As I understood many of the so called evidences are based on the youtube movies taken by the cell phones by random people. So that should not be a problem to fake such kind of evidences. Also treating google earth photos like an evidence sounds funny for me.
These, by the very nature of their orbit, cannot remain fixed over one place; they move relative to the ground below and once past it, will not be back until they've completed an orbit.
This, then, means that someone will have to prioritize what areas to investigate and at what times; satellite orbits can be changed, but that is _extremely_ costly, as you need to expend fuel - and there's no simple way to refuel; spend it all, and you need to launch another satellite.
So - maybe the US found that something other than Russian-backed militias destabilizing Ukraine warranted their attention. Say, IS or al-Qaeda - and focussed their attention elsewhere.
b) It is not news that you are being watched.
It may, however, be news when a satellite is watching; perhaps the US piggybacks surveillance gear on commercial satellites, for instance - they couldn't reveal satellite imagery without anybody and his dog being able to figure out which satellite took the photo.
Or - the quality of the photos may be much better than anticipated.
Or, for that matter - maybe the US doesn't want to stick this to Russia as hard as they could; perhaps they do not want to find out what the world community would do once it is proven beyond any doubt that Russia gambled that they could destabilize Ukraine at no cost to themselves, only to find that the rebels and their -ahem- advisors of undisclosed origin promptly escalated the conflict by committing mass murder by incompetence, ignorance or both.
As for your last point, I don't quite catch it. Is the lack of obviously faked 'evidence' evidence that someone is having something to hide?
Not exactly to hide, but bring a mess around the truth. This case has something common with political things and so it's a dirty games area.
Satellites can't see through them.
There’re satellite images of the launch site taken on 16 of July 2014, and on 21 of July, but unfortunately, not on the 17 of July.
They only sense some visible light, and/or near IR (a.k.a. short-wave infrared). You can view some specs there: https://www.digitalglobe.com/resources/satellite-information The clouds are completely opaque in those spectrum, so the land below clouds is completely invisible from those satellites. And the segment of the missile trail above the clouds is very volatile, there’re strong winds there.
Nothing can be seen on those images. And in the video uploaded by Netherlands’ public prosecution office, they told satellite imaginary between 16 and 21 of July is unusable, because clouds.
As far as I know, for many of their tasks (such as detecting missile launches) an infrared MASINT is sufficient.
If that’s the case, the system doesn’t produce images at all.
The problem with that, no one except the US military and government knows for sure, whether they have far IR aka thermal imaging sensors on their satellites, or they don’t.
Fortunately, there’s a solid body of evidence even without that secret data.
I doubt that, at least at the current state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf6gJ8NDhYA
It includes a lot of photos, videos, intercepted phone calls, and other related data. The video is official, meaning the investigation team has evidences backing every statement made.
The other day US have killed another 62 Syrians and over hundred wounded by mistake. Still no news here about it.
https://www.rt.com/news/359678-us-strikes-syrian-army/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf6gJ8NDhYA
The video summarizes available evidence answering the question why we sure what happened.
So what's the outcome? Putin could care less and doesn't answer to any authority that can apply restraint or collect damages. So what does this change?
[1] https://www.om.nl/onderwerpen/mh17-crash/@96068/jit-flight-m...
[2] https://www.om.nl/onderwerpen/mh17-vliegramp/presentaties/pr...
https://www.rt.com/news/359678-us-strikes-syrian-army/