Russia has a history of downing passenger planes — and covering it up

[AndreasHG]

In an article published today by the Washington Post, Max Boot updates the readers on the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243. Of the 67 passengers and crew, 38 died, and many of the 29 survivors are in bad shape.

 

"Russian spokesmen blamed a bird collision, but a preliminary Azerbaijani investigation — backed by Western aviation experts and U.S. officials — concluded that a Russian antiaircraft missile most likely brought down the plane. Azerbaijani officials told local media that not only did Russian fire damage the airplane, but Russian authorities also jammed its electronics and denied it permission to land, forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan." Evidently the Russians hoped that the plane would sink to the Caspian seabed making any investigation on the causes of the incident extremely difficult.

 

"Such accidents, admittedly, happen in wartime everywhere. On Sunday, a U.S. guided-missile cruiser in the Red Sea mistakenly shot down a Navy F/A-18 fighter that it probably mistook for a Houthi drone or missile (the pilot and a weapons officer survived with minor injuries after ejecting). In 1988, a U.S. warship battling Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian passenger aircraft that it mistook for an Iranian fighter aircraft, killing 290 people."

 

"But when civilized nations commit such offenses, they apologize and make reparations. They don’t refuse to admit what they did or try to blame someone else for their actions."

 

"That, however, has been the Kremlin’s reprehensible pattern dating from the 1983 downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 — making its protestations of innocence in Wednesday’s case all the more dismissible."

"A decade ago, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, went down over a portion of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed forces, killing 298 passengers and crew. The Kremlin denied responsibility and spun out various conspiracy theories, blaming the crash on either a Ukrainian fighter jet or some kind of elaborate CIA plot. (A Russian website even bizarrely claimed that the passengers were already dead when the plane took off.) Eventually a Dutch-led investigation proved that the airplane had been brought down by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile system fired from the Russian-controlled region of Ukraine."

 

This pattern is repeated every time there is an incident in Russia. Think about Chernobyl: The Chernobyl disaster began on 26 April 1986 with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat. As the plant was run by authorities in Moscow, the government of Ukraine did not receive prompt information on the accident. On April 28, radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden,[67][68] over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from the Chernobyl Plant. 

That day, the Swedish government contacted the Soviet government to inquire about whether there had been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. The Soviets initially denied it. It was only after the Swedish government suggested they were about to file an official alert with the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Soviet government admitted that an accident had taken place at Chernobyl. 

At first, the Soviets only conceded that a minor accident had occurred, but once they began evacuating more than 100,000 people, the full scale of the situation was realized by the global community.

 

Lying through your teeth, even when unnecessary and easily refuted, must be encoded in Russia's DNA.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/27/azerbaijan-flight-crash-russia-ukraine-history/

[zmisha]

Grozny is currently a war zone. So those who send civil aviation to this region are aware of the risk.

[zmisha]

The main question in this story is "Who will be the judge?"

Chechen court will say that it was a NATO`s drone seen daily in the air of Grozny city.
NATO`s court will say that is was Russian rocket.

Choosing the right judge and the right court is the most important thing here. Z guys hope that no one from NATO will be allowed to investigate this. So we will have the right judge and the right conclusions. Other judges have other opinions but they will not have any access to evidences - so their statements will be unfounded.

[AndreasHG]

1 hour ago, zmisha said:

Chechen court will say that it was a NATO`s drone

If there was even a remote possibility that a Ukrainian drone caused this incident, you can rest assured Russia would have already denounced it.

The reality is that drones are not designed to shoot down planes.

[zmisha]

1 minute ago, AndreasHG said:

If there was even a remote possibility that a Ukrainian drone caused this incident, you can rest assured Russia would have already denounced it.

The reality is that drones are not designed to shoot down planes.

In any war, history is written by the winners. Whoever wins will tell the world how it all happened.

[stevenl]

7 minutes ago, zmisha said:

In any war, history is written by the winners. Whoever wins will tell the world how it all happened.

No need for that, it's clear what happened.

[Lacessit]

It is not just air disasters. Russia has a history of suppressing the truth. It comes with a culture of paranoia and secrecy.

 

News of the Chernobyl disaster was suppressed for 5 days, until the radiation readings from fallout in other countries made it impossible to conceal.

 

The Novocherkassk strike of 1962 resulted in 26 unarmed protestors being shot dead by Soviet troops. The massacre was concealed by the Soviet government for decades.

 

Now we have Putin, saying all is well with his special military operation. It would be most inconvenient if the real casualty figures ever saw the light of day.

[zmisha]

24 minutes ago, stevenl said:

No need for that, it's clear what happened.

Can`t see anyone blaming Russia outside the NATO+ (including Japan, Israel and SK).

[Jingthing]

The accidental targetting was somewhat understandable and excusable in the fog of war (although there should be no civilian aviation in such areas) but the refusal to allow landing and sending it over the Caspian Sea hoping to sink it was a crime of unspeakable evil. 

[novacova]

On 12/28/2024 at 10:18 AM, AndreasHG said:

Russia has a history of downing passenger planes — and covering it up

Most all countries have a history of covering up their malfeasances.

11 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

Russia has a history of suppressing the truth.

Yes, as with most countries, especially the United States, we don’t publicly know even the tip of the iceberg of what some of the atrocities three letter agencies have hidden. Though as with most patriots of their homeland, the truth is impossible.

[Flyguy330]

22 minutes ago, zmisha said:

Can`t see anyone blaming Russia outside the NATO+ (including Japan, Israel and SK).

Putin apologises for shootdown...https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/putin-apologises-aliyev-over-tragic-incident-with-azerbaijan-airlines-plane-2024-12-28/

[blazes]

What's in it for Russia to bring down the Azerbaijan plane????

[3NUMBAS]

Russia is a Pariah for years and there is no way back for the apemen 

[3NUMBAS]

4 minutes ago, blazes said:

What's in it for Russia to bring down the Azerbaijan plane????

Drunken operators at the controls ,they don’t know what they’re doing sober

[AndreasHG]

2 hours ago, zmisha said:

In any war, history is written by the winners.

Then rest assured the downing of the Azerbaijani flight will be blamed on the Russians 

[AndreasHG]

1 hour ago, novacova said:

Most all countries have a history of covering up their malfeasances.

Actually I already replied to a similar comment and I stand by what I said. Of course, for a Russian who has never experienced living in an open society is difficult to understand.

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Cover-ups in open, democratic societies simply don't work. In the event of an incident, the simple implementation of follow-up, corrective and prevention measures, involving tents of people, playing different roles within an organization, is almost impossible to hide and a clear sign that something went wrong.

 

Cover-ups only work under totalitarian regimes, or in the sick minds of conspiracy theorists and in Hollywood movies, which spare no effort to undermine Americans' trust in national institutions.

 

Those who don't understand this do not understand the true nature of open, democratic societies, vs totalitarian ones. And very likely don't deserve to live as free men and women in an open society. 

 

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