[lbn]

Do people actually believe that Putin personally ordered to shoot down that plane? What incentive did he have to do something that would obviously turn the whole world against him and lead to many sanctions?

Do you think him doing something obviously stupid like this is more likely than just supplying serious weapons to incompetent "soldiers"?

[pjc50]

Not directly, obviously, any more than Reagan ordered the shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655. But in both cases the underlying wrong was escalating a conflict, putting the weapons in the area and setting rules of engagement that allowed the launching of missiles when the country was not officially at war.

The incursion into Ukraine was presumably supposed to be deniable, unlike the Iraqui invasion of Kuwait.