> Did Kiev keep commercial flights running to provide a human shield to their military operations as they already lost some a/c to SAMs?
I think the "human shield" theory is nonsense. Every day UA planes were shot down even when tens of passenger planes flew over the area.
To my understanding all a/c losses (except one) were cause of light SAMs/manpads that can reach only 5km of altitude. And the only one higher than that was close to border and suspected to be shot from russian side of the border.
So, to me it seems Ukraine wanted to get the money from companies using their airspace. And to keep their "pride" by hinting that they control their country airspace. Perhaps they also trusted Russia to not to shoot at passenger planes.
But in the morning of 17.Jul they had the intelligence info that BUK system came over the border. At that point they should have closed the airspace immediately, even if the intelligence info was not 100% concrete.
IMHO, it's also interesting that almost 100 Russian civilian aircrafts flew over donbass area, within one week after MH17 was downed.