The US state department has dismissed as “preposterous” Russian TV reports that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, while the images used to back up the claim have been described as crude fakes.
[...] The photo released on Friday by Russia’s Channel One and Rossiya TV stations purportedly shows a Ukrainian fighter plane firing an air-to-air missile in the direction of flight MH17. The channels said they got the photo from a Moscow-based organisation, which had received it via email from a man who identified himself as an aviation expert.
The article indicates that some people found the purported satellite photo to be a forgery because of the size of the planes relative to the landscape (it would have to be a photograph taken from another plane closer in rather than from a satellite for it to make sense), because the clouds apparently match up with a 2012 satellite photo, and because the commercial plane looks like a Boeing 767 rather than a 777.I would also point out that the pictured close proximity of the supposed Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet to the airliner, the wide angle between their flight trajectories, and the fact that the Su-27 is shown firing the missile directly at the airliner rather than leading the shot make for a poor chance of a realistically achievable missile attack. These aspects add to the evidence that not only is the image a fake, it's a very poorly-done fake.
And then there are the absurdly low odds of a photographic satellite happening to capture any such encounter.
Unfortunately, at least one poll found that most Russian citizens believe that the July 17th disaster was Ukraine's fault. All available legitimate evidence points to pro-Russian separatist fighters operating a Buk M-1 anti-aircraft missile battery as the actual culprits.