U.S. Officials Lay Out Case Against Russia

WSJ ^ | July 22, 2014 | Siobhan Gormon and Paul Sonne

[Monorprise]

I honestly don’t think its fair to say Putin has control over the individual ‘rebel’ factions. He may support them in their general cause but if he had control he would probably uses it far more effectively.

I also don’t think the Washington has a lot of good evidence in the situation. Even if Putin provided the missile which would not at all be out of character given his support of Crimean Independence. He certainly didn’t order it fired at a civilian airliner.

If the missile was provided by Russia it was almost certainly provided to the rebels to help fight off Ukrainian air assaults. I however think its more than likely, given the rebels control of Crimea that they obtained the missile on their own from the Crimea’s(formerly Ukraine) own military supply. Which would be predominately Russian anyway.

Why bother going to Russia when there is a stock pile right next door all but abandoned by the Ukrainan military. Its like the various national guard armories here, your going to find all sorts of toys if you can get into them, and you will get into them when you take over the local & regional government.

What Crimea needs is a more established government of its own, able to take control of the region and its military. It needs this mostly because those missiles and the men who fired them are needed for Crimea’s defense.