I'm not hating on Russia here, but why oh why would anyone in the Ukraine shoot down a commercial flight over their own territory?
That's an excellent point!
Let me start by saying that I'm neither Russian, nor Ukrainian and I'm not even arguing in the separatists defense.
However, as a pilot who has regularly overflow that particular area of the Ukraine and who is primarily concerned about aviation safety and not politics, I really wonder to what extent the Ukrainian government has used the civil airlines above 30000' as a human shield in order to launch their own attacks on the separatists.
So, no, the Ukrainians would obviously not shoot down a commercial flight over their own territory, however any shooting down of any civil airliner over their territory would only a cynical win-win situation for them; blame the Russians, blame the separatists, and use this as a very convenient propaganda tool to get more kudos, $$'s and €€'s from the west! Literally like manna falling from the skies.
So now you have a situation where IMHO civil aviation has been (ab)used by the Ukrainians in a totally sick game of chicken: on one hand you have the Ukrainian Air Force which was very active in the Eastern Ukraine in the weeks prior to the downing of MH17, and on the other hand you have the separatists (who have no air force of their own) were actively shooting at Ukrainian Air Force aircraft with the huge risk of eventually shooting down a civil jetliner.
The ENTIRE airspace in that area should have been CLOSED for ALL CIVIL AVIATION
by the Ukrainian authorities, not just the airspace up to 30000' and thus use the civil aircraft >30000' as human shields.
When I see images of a soldier holding up a teddy bear from one of the MH17 passengers, it reminds me of that image of that little scared boy standing next to Saddam Hussein who was using him as a human shield:
