That seems unlikely: government planes were being shot down in the area starting in April (22&#x2F;4 to be exact), months before the incident. Those planes were delivering military supplies and shooting at and bombing the separatists, so it&#x27;s not like there was no reason to shoot them down. Before the MH17 incident, 17 planes were shot down in that area. As the report puts it &quot;But none of the parties involved made any connection between the military developments and the risk to civil aviation&quot;. This is in fact pretty unfair because it doesn&#x27;t mention that it was (and is) under the authority of the Ukranian government exclusively. Neither Russia, nor any of the separatist organisations could have closed the airspace if they wanted to.<p>The report is quite clear : the Ukrainian authorities were aware of the threat, and had good reason to close the airspace BEFORE this happened. This is in fact one of the few pieces of blame being laid out here.<p>That means the only real remaining question is whether the Ukrainian authorities were using commercial flights, and the lives of thousands of passengers as human shields to safeguard their military aviation in the area, were they trying to provoke Russia into shooting down commercial planes or was it merely a monumental fuckup ?