[CCIP]

I would still be cautious on jumping into conclusions about where the SAM came from - it's pretty certain at this point that it was launched from predominantly rebel-held territory, but I would be cautious with attributing its origin/operators to Russia just yet. We don't have the whole picture.

As for putting the blame on Russia generally, that's not reasonable in any "hard" definition - to me, this is an example of the broader failure of the "may be an SOB, but our SOB" approach to foreign conflicts and proxy wars, and Russia is hardly the only one responsible for atrocities caused by it. One only has to keep in mind that groups from Taliban to ISIS today were at one point largely armed by the US, both directly and indirectly, and yet most people here wouldn't go around saying the US government and military need to be held directly responsible for the recent massacres in Iraq or Pakistan.

I think the message here should instead be that "our SOB" just doesn't work and EVERYONE needs to quit it as soon as possible. This applies to both sides in the Ukraine, by the way. More to the point, this not only does nothing to reveal Russia's control of the rebels, but quite the opposite - if these groups were under Russia's operational command and part of Russia's military and intelligence infrastructure, arguably this shootdown would have never happened. It shows a rudimentary lack of intelligence-sharing and operational control by Russia of even the rebels' most advanced weapons in the simplest situations. You can't get any simpler than an aircraft that's on radar, on ADS-B, flying a filed and commonly-used flight plan, talking to ATC, etc. etc. This is not a difficult situation for a military force controlled by a state like Russia. The problem is they aren't under Russia's control at all, but are a poorly-organized, poorly-disciplined, and arguably totally out of control and out of bounds of international law, and that's what makes the situation so volatile. The situation in Eastern Ukraine is not a menacing superpower secretly moving pawns and pulling strings - it's medieval politics and warfare with modern weapons.