@SLFplatine said:
Multiple reports indicate that it was known several days prior that the undisciplined irregular separatist/rebel army had acquired control of a SAM system capable of bringing down large aircraft at altitude. Now, if so, and if Kiev was aware (and there are multiple reports indicating they were) why they did not immediately close the airspace over the area within which said undisciplined irregular armed units were operating is a question they need to answer.
One possible answer (according to the Wall Street Journal):
[The counterintelligence chief at Ukraine's national security service, Vitaly Nayda,] said that his agency became aware that the rebels possessed three Buk-M1 antiaircraft systems, as of July 14. On that day, a Ukrainian military Antonov An-26 transport plane was shot by a surface-to-air missile, killing two crew members.
* * * *
Another Ukrainian official with oversight over civil aviation matters said that the government never considered closing off the entire airspace of the eastern region because they never dreamed that the Russians or separatists would target civilian air traffic.
U.S. Points to Russian Missile Connection in Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Crash - WSJ
Translation - inertia, perhaps busy with other matters, coupled with absence of imagination, no sense of urgency, and neither contemplating nor understanding how a Buk-M1 system potentially might be used by "undisciplined irregular armed units" (as opposed to how the system
was designed to be used by a well trained, disciplined team.) Maybe some compartmentalization of information as well.
We are talking about government work, after all.