One cannot imagine the anguish felt by the families who have lost loved ones in the downing of the Malaysian airliner. This time it is known what happened to the Malaysian plane; it did not vanish, it fell from the sky and the graphic images of the carnage of bodies and wreckage are everywhere on the media. There is disbelief that a civilian airliner has been shot down, (there is little doubt of that) not least because most people would not have thought that any airline would take the risk of flying over a war zone. Many had already diverted flights, but not all. The ill starred Malaysian carrier was one of those to judge the risk as acceptable. It has paid a heavy price, but that is as nothing to the price paid by its passengers. The international condemnation of the outrage is at maximum level, as are the accusations and counter claims as to who fired the rocket. Unlike past disasters of this kind, the advent of modern social media and the internet makes it possible to get the apparent facts together quite quickly through intercepts. The health warning comes that the same system provides an ideal medium for disinformation as well as truth. The most plausible explanation is that separatists launched the missile to shoot down what they believed to be a Russian built cargo plane operated by the Kiev government. There are intercepts which confirm this. If these are genuine, several questions arise. 1 Where did the separatists obtain the missile system able to hit the aircraft at such a height? Was it captured from the unstable Ukrainian army or was it covertly supplied by Russia or by separatist agents in Russia? 2 What part are Russian intelligence and special forces playing in support of the separatists and did this contribute to the disaster? 3 Why had Kiev not closed to civilian flights what it claims to be its airspace, if it (a) had lost control of a missile system or (b) believed the Russians had supplied one to what it calls terrorists? 4 Is the international aviation authority practice of issuing ‘advice’ to civil airlines concerning war zones fit for purpose or should this be changed to publicised directives? If this is not the general drift of what happened, there are only two other possibilities. One is a bomb on board (already discounted by most) and the other that it was a Ukrainian rocket battery which shot the plane down, believing it to be a Russian cargo plane bringing weapons to the insurgents. The problem is both sides are using the same Soviet era equipment and transport. In the literal and possibly even the legal sense, President Putin is right when he says that the responsibility for the disaster lies with the country in whose airspace this occurred. But he knows, as do we all, that it is not quite as simple as that. What is clear is the the style of confrontation with Russia, so favoured by the EU, NATO, the US and UK makes matters worse not better. Ukraine faces an insurgency which cannot be put down by force and which is leading to significant loss of life not only of those involved, but in a game changer calamity involving innocent travellers, huge numbers of whom were women and children. We all know what has happened in Ukraine since the Kiev riots began. Just suppose at that point the West had said to Russia ”this is your sphere of influence but our area of interest. Let us work together to resolve the difficulties in a peaceful and constructive way to the benefit of all sides.” We cannot say for sure where we would be now, but we can say for certain we would not be in mourning for three hundred innocents blown out of the sky. There are, in this moment of world history, lessons which are proving unnecessarily hard to learn.