– Ukraine Military Transport Plane Shot Down, 49 Killed (ZeroHedge, June 14, 2014):
While the world’s short attention span may have been diverted to Iraq where the ISIS insurgents are now knocking on Baghdad’s door, and with it – Iraq’s vast southern oil fields and infrastructure (which if taken offline would send oil up to $200 according to T. Boone Pickens). the “out of sight, out of mind” conflict in Ukraine, which the western media dropped covering like a hot potato some time in early May for reasons not entirely known, continues to escalate and where the latest outbreak of violence took place overnight when a Ukraine military transport Il-76 was allegedly shot down by separatists in the city of Lugansk as it was about to land.
As a result of the crash all 49 Ukrainian service personnel on board were killed. The death toll would be the biggest suffered by government forces in a single incident since Ukraine’s government launched a military operation against pro-Russian separatists in the east.
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The entire Ukraine Air Force & Army Capital equipment is ex Russian, much of it given after the collapse of the CCCP.
Spares will be limited, obviously Russia won’t be willing to help, and they will be at least twenty years obsolete with regards evasive software and diversionary tackle.
In other words the East Ukraine pro Russia group are being supplied (somehow!) with state of the art firepower more than capable of inflicting serious damage to Kiev’s hardware.