United in grief

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is back before the crowd in a press conference. The world is united in grief, he said, this time over the downing of MH17, a 777-Boeing flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, inclement weather rerouted its normal flight pattern and was diverted instead over the war zone in Ukraine, on the eastern side bordering toward Russia where pro-Russian separatist have declared their independence from the Kiev government.

Ukraine since November of last year has been in turmoil. It started over a trade agreement it was ready to sign with EU that the then-President Viktor Yanukovych reneged to ink and turned to Moscow instead, for what he thought was a more reasonable arrangement, given the country’s dependence on Russia for its gas.

Ukraine west of Dnieper river is perceived to be pro-EU (borders with Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova) while the eastern part is pro-Russia, particularly Donets’k, Luhans’k, and Karkiv. Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, sits astride the Dnieper River that conveniently divides the state. Chernobyl, the site of the nuclear accident in 1986, is northwest of Kiev near Belarus, from which the Dnieper comes from, originating in Smolensk of Russia. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO actively tried to get Eastern European countries to join EU. Many in Ukraine’s west were eager to join. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is opposed and had warned the West that there are certain parts of the former Soviet Union that are non-negotiable in terms of their membership in Moscow’s sphere of influence. Ukraine numbered amongst them.

When it was still the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union, the state contributed Nikita Khrushchev who was born in the small Russian town of Kalinovka on the border of Ukraine, and who later became Ukraine’s Commissar for Stalin after his involvement in the defense of Russia in the Battle of Stalingrad versus the German Nazis. It was Khrushchev who unilaterally attached Russian Crimea into Ukraine. It is this divide between the west and the east of Ukraine that has become the world’s headache in 2014.

After President Yanukovych was ran out of Kiev by forces friendly to EU, and sought asylum in Moscow, Russia took Crimea back and pro-Russian separatist declared independence in Donets’k and Luhans’k. In the heat of an undeclared civil war, pro-western Petro Poroshenko was elected President and had vowed not only to regain the separatist regions of East Ukraine, but also to get back Crimea from Russia. The U.S. and NATO have publicly declared their support of the Kiev government.

In the last week, as Ukrainian armed forces battled separatist groups, two ground-to-air missiles shot two Ukrainian planes from the sky. Then an identified jet flying at 32,000 was shot down, turning out to be a civilian plane. MH17 wandered into a war zone already avoided by other commercial carriers for obvious reasons. Air controllers’ diversion of MF17 to the war zone from bad weather has now proved very costly.

Here is a part of a transcript of an alleged intercepted talk between Cossack Nikolay Kozitsin and a Russian intelligence adviser released by Ukraine’s government:

“It has a Malaysia Airlines logo on it, they say,” said the unidentified militant. “What was it doing in Ukraine’s territory?”

To that, Kozitsin is heard responding: “That means they were carrying spies, f**k them, got it? They shouldn’t be f**king flying. There is a war going on.”

It now appears that a ground-to-air missile struck MH17 and the blame game has flown thick ever since. Separatist forces retrieved the plane’s black box, have no way of deciphering it, nor are they inclined to turn it over to Kiev, so it is believed to have been turned over to the Russians across the border. 

The manifest revealed 295 total passengers, listed as citizens of the Netherlands (154), Malaysia (43), Australia (27), Indonesia (12), UK (nine), four each from Germany and Belgium, Philippines (three), Canada (one) and 41 victims still unverified. All 15 airline crew were Malaysians.

Ironically, Mother Nature’s fury added to the grief as Typhoon Rammasun (aka Glenda) took 38 lives in the Philippines, ravaged the south of Manila, and raged ferociously toward unprepared Hainan and Guangdong in southern China. Flights were grounded in Haikou and Hong Kong. Boats at the Sanya port battened down for the super typhoon, reputed to be the strongest so far to devastate the region. Grief not only was in the lost lives but the destruction of the region’s economy and social structures, as well.

Meanwhile, Israel cleansed Hamas forces holed in tunnels in Gaza. Israel does not recognize the U.S. supported coalition government in Gaza that joined moderate Hamas led by Mahmoud Abbas to the more radical jihadist combatants like al-Fatah.

Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak was on the money when he said that the world is again united in grief. In Israel’s case, it seems to have become endless. In MH17, we are now looking for scapegoats.