i know the propaganda on both sides is very strong, but the rebels simply have no motive to shoot down a passenger jet. i know this is a harsh calculus, but it is the type of logic that overrides in war.
the rebels could not have possibly thought the lives of the people aboard the plane were worth the cost of a wasted missile.
that allows for two legitimate possibilities:
1) the rebels thought the plane was a ukrainian military plane. it was coming in from the direction ukrainian planes would normally follow, and the identification and tracking tools they're using in the fields is not on the level of the tools that the infrastructure provides. to take nothing away from the tragedy of events, the reality is that the plane flew into a war zone. bad things happen when you fly a passenger plane into a warzone. the proper response is to immediately reroute all civilian flights away from the area. they may be trying to prevent an investigation to avoid the optics around it, but that doesn't suggest they did it with intent. nor can we expect them to "be more careful". they need to stop flying over the area while the fighting continues.
2) american and nato forces regularly stage attacks for political reasons, and/or take advantage of errors such as this. it doesn't have to be about actually sending nato troops in (that's not likely to happen until the missile shield is completed). merely creating a security situation for investigators to take over provides the proper context for the ukrainian state to enter the area.
the most likely possibility is (1), and by a long shot. the situation may end up exploited in the way that (2) suggests, but that doesn't imply they were responsible. yet, if there is a conspiracy - if this was planned, however unlikely - it is the west that is a more likely suspect than the east, both due to motives and to historical precedent.
