> But I would only blame those who shoot it down. It's not okay to shoot down airplanes. Commercial airplanes are not valid targets.
If only reality worked that way. In real war, everything is a potential target - sometimes civilians get hurt by mistake, other times because one side decides to take advantage of the "rules" above and e.g. hide weapons in hospitals.
In general, if an area of land is a warzone and it's known there are anti-aircraft missiles deployed, and there are confirmed shootdowns of aircrafts in the area, you don't fly over that area. Flying there shows lack of practical wisdom. You're betting lives over desperate people following some arbitrary rules and not making any mistake.
In general, exposing yourself willingly to significant danger is stupid, and if anything happens to you, you can't avoid some part of responsibility.
> if an area of land is a warzone and it's known there are anti-aircraft missiles deployed
But it was not known there was anti-aircraft missile capability until April 14th (a few days before the MH17 crime). You're making the exact logic fallacy that the DSB criticized in its report.
All incidents from before that Antonov downing on the 14th were done using MANPADS (i.e. shoulder-carried missile launchers). These don't reach high altitude. The information about the new capability wasn't relayed quickly enough to commercial aviation authorities (I don't think the DSB identified a reason for the delay).
Instead, the DSB argued that risk assessment for fly/no-fly decisions should not only include known risks, but should also account for unknown risks (say, the speculation that the rebels did have anti-aircraft capability).
(edit: although another source says that the rebels' STA capability was known since June 29th)
That seems unlikely: government planes were being shot down in the area starting in April (22/4 to be exact), months before the incident. Those planes were delivering military supplies and shooting at and bombing the separatists, so it's not like there was no reason to shoot them down. Before the MH17 incident, 17 planes were shot down in that area. As the report puts it "But none of the parties involved made any connection between the military developments and the risk to civil aviation". This is in fact pretty unfair because it doesn't mention that it was (and is) under the authority of the Ukranian government exclusively. Neither Russia, nor any of the separatist organisations could have closed the airspace if they wanted to.
The report is quite clear : the Ukrainian authorities were aware of the threat, and had good reason to close the airspace BEFORE this happened. This is in fact one of the few pieces of blame being laid out here.
That means the only real remaining question is whether the Ukrainian authorities were using commercial flights, and the lives of thousands of passengers as human shields to safeguard their military aviation in the area, were they trying to provoke Russia into shooting down commercial planes or was it merely a monumental fuckup ?
Flying a civilian plane at 10 km on its daily route is not "provocation".
It seems we'll keep seeing every attempt being made to shift the blame on Ukraine, not the ones who actually decided to pull the trigger. Russia is active in stopping an investigation to find out who it was. That tells me a lot.
Passenger planes routinely fly over conflict zones. A plane flying at >10 km cannot be mistaken for a fighter-bomber. Unless the operators of BUK were, well, drunk, which is still what I suspect, but equally irresponsible.
I don't think anyone is really trying to shift the blame. The operators of BUK deserve all the blame they can get. The point is whether or not assign additional blame to people responsible for routing the passenger plane over the conflict zone. Personally I say yes, they should be assigned some smaller but non-zero amount of blame.
If only reality worked that way. In real war, everything is a potential target - sometimes civilians get hurt by mistake, other times because one side decides to take advantage of the "rules" above and e.g. hide weapons in hospitals.
In general, if an area of land is a warzone and it's known there are anti-aircraft missiles deployed, and there are confirmed shootdowns of aircrafts in the area, you don't fly over that area. Flying there shows lack of practical wisdom. You're betting lives over desperate people following some arbitrary rules and not making any mistake.
In general, exposing yourself willingly to significant danger is stupid, and if anything happens to you, you can't avoid some part of responsibility.