KT McFarland, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan and a Fox News national security analyst, said the attack was most likely the work of Russian separatists, not the Russian or Ukrainian armies.
"I think it’s far more likely it was rebel forces in eastern Ukraine trying to get the Russian back involved," McFarland said.
But retired Army Lt. Col Ralph Peters, also a Fox News contributor, said it is unlikely the Russian military would have put missile batteries capable of knocking a plane out of the sky at such an altitude in the hands of rebels.
"It wasn't the separatists, although Russia will try to blame them, or blame the Ukrainians," Peters said. "The Russians have not given the separatists complex, high-altitude air-defense systems.If this airliner was flying at 34,000 feet or any altitude close to that, it was shot down by Russian military air-defense systems perched on the Ukrainian border."
Peters said the Russian military has been shooting down Ukrainian military aircraft in recent weeks, and most likely mistook the airliner for a Ukrainian military aircraft.
"Russia has a small number of elite forces, but most of the Russian military is ill-trained, sloppy and marginally disciplined.," he said. "With no Western response to them shooting down Ukrainian aircraft, they just got trigger happy."
That the Russian military themselves shot the Malaysian airliner down, rather than just pro-Russian fringe separatists inside Ukraine, would be very provocative.
