Mechanism of Provocation
From that which can be now said for sure.
1. The Malaysian "Boeing" was led into the DPR territory consciously, the course correction which led it into the war zone was clearly intentional. The machinations with the "Boeing" route are absolutely identical to a well-known provocation with a South-Korean "Boeing", which the americans led into the USSR airspace in 1983, after which it was shot down.
2. The "Boeing" was working only with Ukrainian dispatchers - Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk ones, the offset of the corridor to the North of a typical route was organized there. There is no way Russia or the militia could direct it into the conflict zone.
3. The "Boeing" was accompanied by the 2 jets of the junta air force (there are discrepancies - some sources write about a Su-25, others about Su-27) one of which was seen by the eyewitnesses near the crash site of the "Boeing" as it was retreating towards Debaltsevo. What happened to the 2nd junta airplane is unknown, the 2 observed parachutes in the vicinity of the "Boeing" crash site may well belong to the pilots of the junta air force. Somewhat earlier the unconfirmed messages about the shot down Su-25 and AN-26 arrived, but there are no significant confirmations for this. Strelkov didn't make any official announcements on this topic.
4. The Spanish dispatcher who carried out monitoring of the "Boeing" confirmed the fact of presence of the Ukrainian airplanes next to the "Boeing", and also the fact of an attack of the plane by the junta, which according to him was also confirmed by the Ukrainian military, who claimed that they know precisely who gave the order (from here the versions about Kolomoisky and Avakov originated). Actually, the fact of the presence of the Ukrainian jets next to "Boeing", the testimony of the Spanish dispatcher and the statement of the eyewitness of the "Boeing" catastrophe allows us to determine the guilty side authentically.
5. Prior to opening the "black boxes" it will be hard to determine how exactly was the "Boeing" shot down - at this point the militia fighters found 8 out of 12. Among the versions, besides the most obvious - attack by air-to-air missiles (which was mentioned by a number of American sources), there is a version of a collision between the "Boeing" and a junta airplane, and also the version sounded by the Russian media that the "Boeing" was confused with Putin's airplane. Also it is not clear what were the 3 explosions that were observed by the eyewitness.
6. Regarding the version that the airplanes were shot down from "Buk", then as the physics calculations show, even if the militia fighters brought the captured "Buk" into operational state (its current combat readiness and the tactical position are unknown), taught the squad and locked it into an air defense complex and deployed it in the area of Snezhnoye-Torez, then "Boeing" was supposed to fall on the territory of the Russian Federation. And after an attack from the Ukrainian "Buks" (which are many in the Donbass), the "Boeing" would fall exactly on the DPR territory.
Overall, a quite clumsily prepared provocation is apparent, when the passenger "Boeing" was consciously directed (from Kiev or from Dnepropetrovsk - this is yet to be clarified) into the zone of a military conflict, where it wen't accompanied by the two junta jets, after which it was destroyed (with a high share of probability, 1 more plane was destroyed besides the "Boeing", which is where the parachutes came from). Later the mechanism of the information pump was launched with the goal of blaming the militia fighters in the destruction of the airplane, which the junta brought into the DPR sky on purpose. In the internet there were a lot of fake injections that the airplane was shot down by the militia, that new sanctions need to be introduced and that NATO military intervention has to start.
The goal of the provocations quite clear - to blame the militia and the Russian Federation and to turn around the unfortunately arranging tendencies in Donbass. Because the provocation was made quite crudely (even on the foreign resources they reasonably point out that the main culprits sit in Kiev), then its effect from my point of view will be limited. At maximum, the junta will try to squeeze a temporary respite out of this badly prepared provocation, in order to catch its breath after the catastrophe in the battles for Luhansk, Izvarino, and Krasnodon.
Original article: http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/1676992.html (in Russian)