Yulia Latynina: Russian decision on S-300 guarantees repetition of the downed MH17

For today the story with the downed Russian plane resulted in Russian decision to send S-300 missile defense systems to Syria. And it’s scary considering that failed Syrian missile experts couldn’t use even S-200 anti-missile system properly and shot the Russian plane down instead of an Israeli one. Numbers 200, 300 and so on in these systems stand for the distance this thing can travel.

And now monkeys with a grenade similar to those who shot down the Boeing 777 over Ukraine by a BUK will have the technology allowing them to almost effortlessly shoot down planes flying from Tel-Aviv, Larnaca, Antalya. It’s a constant threat to everything within a radius of 300 km from Latakia. In other words, Russian decision to send S-300 to Syria guarantees, with the great probability, the repetition of the story with the downed MH17.

It’s very hard to predict what follows next. The Israelis won’t allow such weapons to be in the hands of people who, as has been recently proven, don't know how to use them. As a result, Israel might destroy them. It’s clear that it might lead to further escalation of the conflict because Putin won’t tolerate something as humiliating as this – even compared to Turkey’s shooting down of the Russian warplane. It means that Russia-Israel cooperation might come to an end, even though Israel was the last country that cooperated with Russia in Syria, showing Putin great respect. As is known, Bibi Netanyahu came to Putin on May 9, walked with the portrait, and the next day Israeli aviation hit Syria’s air defenses. If they’d hit them harder then, the crew of IL-20 plane could be alive.

The circumstances of the incident can be wholly described by an old anecdote popular in the 80s. A teacher asks Vovochka why he broke the window. He responds: «It’s Izzy’s fault – I threw a rock at him and he ducked down».

The claim of Russia’s Defense Ministry, and mister Konashenkov’s in particular, that murderous Israeli planes, the newest generation of the F-16 fighter jets, were hiding behind our slow-moving bast shoe, is totally unconvincing. Even by the information provided by the Defense Ministry, one can tell that IL-20 was flying quite low, while Israeli jets didn’t even enter the Syrian airspace and after dropping the bombs kept their distance, watching how they travel 70 kilometres from there. They really jammed Syrian air defense systems so that they couldn’t shoot them down, but the Russian plane was downed 20 minutes after Israelis dropped the bombs. Considering that 20 minutes is an eternity in an air combat, they couldn’t possibly hide behind the Russian warplane. And, even more importantly, judging from the Ministry’s chart showing the course of the downed plane, it actually conducted reconnaissance in Idlib and at the moment when Israeli bombs were dropped it was ordered not to land, but to fly to where the Israelis were hovering. It’s possible that it was made for the purpose of finding out how many planes were there and help Syrian anti-aircraft gunners, but poorly educated gunners mixed everything up. Izzy didn’t duck down, and the window intentionally flew over him to get hit.

I’m puzzled by two things. First of all, the launch of the missile must have been approved by a Russian military advisor who had to see how things were. Secondly, there must have been Russians at an air base too who saw what was going on. It means that at least two groups of Russian military personnel showed the same incompetence as Syrians. Of course, following the heroic acts of Petrov and Boshirov, we understand the level of these people’s professionalism. But it becomes especially scary if we consider that Syrians shoot into the whiteness of the sky, as though at a copeck – for example, on May 10, trying to shoot down the Israeli planes, they used up 170 missiles.

And then the tragicomical part of this story begins. Frightened Russian military advisers fully responsible for the downed plane must have spent 10 hours thinking how to lie. And they lied which is not surprising at all. What’s surprising is that Russian military leadership, including Minister Shoygu, picked up that lie and Russian propaganda literally went wild. This Sunday we finally found out who is the main enemy of Russia. As usual, it turned out to be Jews. And it's despite the fact that Israel did nothing wrong. Netanyahu immediately called Putin after the incident, and Israelis are ready to share all necessary information.

And Russia does all this for the sake of Assad who didn’t even call after the incident – apparently because he thinks that he’s got nothing to apologize for.

But the scariest consequence of this tragedy is the unwillingness of the Russian military leadership to take responsibility for the incident. And Putin who must understand what’s going on seems to be ok with this. The incompetence of the Defense Ministry suits him because the competent military would threaten his power. The incompetence is a price he’s ready to pay for stability. They can shoot down civilian planes, their own crew, show the video in which American «Apache» shoots at Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and tell that it’s Russian military killing ISIS fighters in Syria, but, on the other hand, they will never dethrone him. Such Defense Ministry is a more quiet and comfortable option.

Nowadays Russian military planes constantly fly somewhere, trying to scare somebody like they do by encroaching on Britain’s airspace. It’s an illustration of a well-known fact from biology – when a chimpanzee attacks its rival, it always puffs up its fur in order to look twice its size. The only difference is that chimpanzees don’t have fighter jets.