Russians shoot down a civilian airliner...

[Rajoo]

IIRC, Putin began his political career as Yeltsin's hit man.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by BeamOn

IIRC, Putin began his political career as Yeltsin's hit man.

An older fellow that I swim with every day is a retired PhD nuclear physicist. He has traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and Russia for various cooperative efforts we had in the nuclear area (Chernobyl, health studies, weapons dismantling, etc.). Putin was his "handler" on several trips to St. Petersburg in the early 1990's when Putin worked for that city's external relations department.

[nailer]

What are your swimming buddy's impressions of Putin the Handler?

[Rajoo]

Ukraine Says It Can Prove Russia Supplied Arms System That Felled Jet

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/wo...e-ukraine.html

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by nailer

What are your swimming buddy's impressions of Putin the Handler?

My buddy is a crazy, politically incorrect old rabble-rouser who was pretty well connected with the Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian nuclear ministries and had a lot of friends in their nuclear physics community. He pretty much characterized Putin as just another apparatchik go-fer at the time.

Speaking of Russian nuclear stuff, my brother is a PhD nuclear physicist at Los Alamos Nat'l Lab. He told me of a funny story of hosting a bunch of Russian physicists at Los Alamos not long after the Cold War ended. One of the Russians made some comment along the lines of "Isn't it amazing that we were once bitter enemies and now we're working together?" to which one of my brother's colleagues responded, "You were never our enemy. Livermore (National Lab) was." (Los Alamos and Livermore have always been extremely competitive).

[nailer]

Soviet gangsterism made us enemies. Is Putin the last of these gangsters?

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by BeamOn

Ukraine Says It Can Prove Russia Supplied Arms System That Felled Jet

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/wo...e-ukraine.html

Ukraine and Russia use the same equipment. Pro Kiev Ukrainians and Pro
Russians Ukrainians know how to operate this particular missile. They do not need any Russian genius to do that.

Moreover this missile system is old stuff.

What comes out of Kiev is kindly viewed as dis and misinformation.

This is essentially early BS propaganda which the article is repeating.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

Ukraine and Russia use the same equipment. Pro Kiev Ukrainians and Pro
Russians Ukrainians know how to operate this particular missile. They do not need any Russian genius to do that.

Moreover this missile system is old stuff.

What comes out of Kiev is kindly viewed as dis and misinformation.

This is essentially early BS propaganda which the article is repeating.

So, do you actually believe that it was the Ukrainians and not the separatists who did this? I'm thinking that you just don't want to believe that the Russians are complicit.

Russia has an unimaginable trove of evidence by virtue of their presence around the launch site, its proximity to their border and their ongoing operations in the area. They know full well what happened within their own theater of operations, given what technical capacity they have in the region. They're doing what they can to create plausible deniability (to those who want to believe them) when they could easily share their signals intelligence, imagery, etc. Get over it, Don. Your wonderboy, Vlad, is into it up to his fur hat.

[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by finnbow

So, do you actually believe that it was the Ukrainians and not the separatists who did this? I'm thinking that you just don't want to believe that the Russians are complicit.

We do not know.

The snipers at Maidan were shooting at both sides.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

We do not know.

Do you actually believe that Putin does not know what happened in a war zone 30 miles from his own border in an area controlled by separatists he's financing and supporting? Please.

Hell, we're 10,000 miles from there and we know that it was a SAM and from where it was launched.