As news came in about the downing of a Malaysian Airlines civilian aircraft in eastern Ukraine, Igor Strelkov, the Russian commander of the separatists fighting the Ukrainian government, reportedly boasted on his VK.com account (Russia’s version of Facebook) about shooting down a plane.
“We did warn you — do not fly in our sky,” he wrote.
Thinking it was a Ukrainian transport plane, Strelkov added that “a plane has just been downed somewhere around Torez, it lays there behind the ‘Progress’ mine,” referring to the mining town of some 80,000 people.
“And here is the video proving another ‘bird’ falling down,” he continued. “The bird went down behind a slagheap, not in a residential district. So no peaceful people were injured,” Strelkov wrote, adding that there is also information about a Ukrainian military plane shot down.
However, Strelkov deleted the post when he found out it was actually a commercial jetliner carrying 295 innocent people — not a military aircraft.
You may recall that Socialist Unity recently posted (with obvious approval) a video of an interview with Strelkov.
A leaked audio appears to confirm that Ukrainian rebels were responsible for downing the airliner.
It seems even Vladimir Putin isn’t trying to deny that rebels shot down the plane. Instead he and others blame NATO and the Ukrainian government for starting the conflict that led to the downing.
And of course:
Um, if Israel wanted to massacre thousands of Palestinians, it could easily do so without a ground invasion.
Update: RT correspondent Sarah Firth resigned in protest of the channel’s coverage of the downing of the Malaysian airliner, following in the footsteps of Liz Wahl.
George Galloway and John Wight remain on staff, loyally parroting Russian propaganda.
