Graham wrote:
it’s in his interest that the official outcome is that it wasn’t Russian.
Well, the consensus seems to be that it is somethig called a S300. That missile is in use by both forces. It has a relatively short range however and what is being said by weapons folks is that the Russian attack variant could not reach where it ended up when fired from Russia by a margin. As there were Russian air strikes and missile attacks going on at the time targeting power lines and stations inside Ukraine, it’s not totally far fetched that some sources think that it may well be a Ukrainian S300 anti Air missile which went astray during that attack.
I think that is what Biden tried to convey. They know the trajectory of the missile and it doesn’t match one launched from Russia.
In war such collateral damage is not unheard of…. and of course both paties will try to make out of it what makes them look better than the other.
Yes of course. I’m not saying it was definitely Russian, but obviously Russian denials are worth absolutely nothing and given the inherent ‘problematic juxtaposition’ between the NATO territory red line and the ‘avoid escalation at all costs’ mantra I’m not sure one can be totally sure about the western version of events either.
It could indeed be a Ukrainian anti-air missile. But I’m sure the uncertainty suits Russia – it’s stopped people talking about the Kherson retreat/defeat, hasn’t it? Just a couple of days on from that and now people are talking about Ukrainian screw-ups and even false-flag attacks! You can’t buy that sort of PR.
a false flag ops from Ukraine.
Ukraine would not do a false flag op in Poland. Way too risky, too many people would know, and one leak would be absolutely disastrous. It’s in the same category as the US govt blowing up the WTC towers, or faking the moon landings.
Could have been a Ukrainian S300 which missed a Russian missile.
It will always be “an isolated incident”, “not worth escalating over”, or some such
One solution would be a deniable op in return 
I mean, Russian sailors do smoke rather carelessly, don’t they 
Most likely it’s just a cockup. Elsewhere it has been pointed out that the place it hit has the same latitude as Kyiv and same longitude as Lviv.
Regardless of whose missile it is, it’s Russia that is to blame — it wouldn’t have happened had they not invaded.
Peter wrote:
The 1983 job involved a US plane straying into USSR airspace, IIRC.
I thought about Korean Air Lines flight 007, September 1, 1983.
Yes; that’s the one. The USSR claimed it was a spying flight, which went into USSR airspace to get the Russkies to switch on their air defence radars so they could be analysed.
Emir wrote:
And it was not the first time they brought down airliner… and they got away both times.
The US have done that, too, and also got away with it.
Graham wrote:
Same as when they shot down that Malaysian airliner. Entirely deliberate, semi-deniable, establishing new norms of what the west will allow them to get away with.
There’s evidence that it was not deliberate. How can you be so sure?
The launch itself was obviously deliberate; it is not difficult. Somebody pressed the button, and knew what the target was…
The Q is whether it was commanded from the very top. Very unlikely.
But these things will happen. And you can’t launch all your ICBMs every time it happens.
Peter wrote:
The launch itself was obviously deliberate; it is not difficult. Somebody pressed the button, and knew what the target was…
There is evidence they thought the target was something else than it was. I.e. they did not deliberately shoot down a civil airliner.
