The Perigee of Vladimir Putin

It was in my mind to write something quite different than that which follows, but events overtook.

I was expecting Rachel Levi, my IT specialist, to return from Kiev, whereupon I could get her thoughts on the whole Israeli / Hamas mess. However, when that Malaysian commercial airliner got shot out of the sky over Eastern Ukraine, she agreed to assist the Ukrainian authorities (the elected ones) on determining just who had done what, to whom, and why.

Here is her report.

In her opinion, after listening to various intercepts (she is understandably vague here) the incident boils down to the actions one of Putin's minions, a certain Igor Girkin, AKA Igor Strelkov. Rachel knew he was a former GRU operative, and recently was prominent in or around the eastern Ukrainian town of Donetsk. Indeed, Igor had recently proclaimed himself the Minister of Defence for the Donetsk Peoples' Republic.

Apparently he had taken credit for the missile hit, but then denied this. Rachel suspected he had heard from a furious Vladimir Putin.
She even forwarded a rather garbled recording in Russian when the incident occurred, as follows:

Voice: "We hit it! We hit it! The bomber is no more."

Strelkov: "I don't think it was a bomber, you idiot."

Voice: "What?"

Strelkov:"It was, I think, an civilian airliner."

Voice: "Shit!"

Admittedly the recordings were somewhat indistinct, and my Russian is a bit rusty, but the gist is there. The blowback on Putin would be severe, and justly deserved. Perhaps the words of Lord Macaulay were in his mind, although somewhat in reverse.

Macaulay had written, "Moderation in war is imbecility." What Putin could well be thinking is, "In war, imbecility can lose you everything."