For Putin it could well be that he wished to gauge the depth of the kenyan’s vacuity. I think, that if the Russians had anything to do with the shootdown and they must have been at least the trainers and probably had at least one specialist on hand with veto power, then they knew that the plane was an airliner. The equipment itself wold ID it as such. The plane was essentially IDing itself and the equipment would read that.
I read an article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/who-malaysia-plane-crash-victims-aids-_n_5597547.html) this morning that up to 100 AIDS/HIV researchers were on the plane. With Russia’s attitude toward the population most affected by that disease, would it be possible he’d have the plane shot down for that reason?