Originally Posted by
Firn
IIRC the Ukrainians did move SAM towards the Russian border to be prepared against Russian strikes, but I don't have the source ready. In any case the airplane cam from Amsterdam, flying from Poland and wester Ukraine in the international corridor which was not officially closed.
It is actually pretty likely that the complex air-defence systems, especially if delivered by the Russians, supporting the seperatists are operated by Russian citziens and are tied through some channels into the Russian air defence network and Russian intelligence. If this is the case I'm quite curious how much of that traffic was intercepted, geo-located and decrypted by the Ukrainians and others. If we consider the relative short time those sophisticated have been stationed in seperatist areas a lot of the communications might have been indeed wireless Of course only selected snippets,if at all, will be made public.