Malaysian passenger jet crashes in Ukraine

Advertisement
imgres

From the FT:

A Malaysian airliner with 295 people on board crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, prompting allegations that it was shot down by pro-Russian separatists.

Malaysia Airlines said it lost contact with Flight MH17, a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, while it was over rebel-held eastern Ukraine.

An adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister claimed the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

The crash came hours after the US and EU toughened economic sanctions against Russia over its alleged support for the rebels, targeting four of Russia’s biggest companies. Russian shares and the rouble dropped sharply in the wake of the latest economic penalties.

The plane crashed near the town of Torez, east of Donetsk, the stronghold of the pro-Russian separatists whose four-month fight with the Ukrainian military has sparked the worst security crisis in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Lot’s of buzz and assumptions in the press but no certainty yet. The Herald Sun is reporting that 27 Aussies were aboard.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.