The transport shot down not long before the passenger plane was in the same area but traveling more from a more Westerly direction than what is shown as the path of the airliner, but not from directly what seems to be the West in that illustration, more like 15 to twenty degrees off that line as best I could tell. If you're interested, you can find where the transport was coming from and going to probably if this hasn't pushed all that off into the bit bucket everywhere. The maps I saw are oriented a bit different, so without one in front of me all that I'm sure of is that it was passing through the same area headed directly toward the unit on the Russian border.
As for the unit on the border, I don't really know if they have an airfield available to them or it's all airdrop of stuff for them.
An airdrop from 33,000 ft.?
Also not seeing the track of the 2 SU-27s that were within several miles of this airliner, or the other 2 airliners that were less than 30 miles away.
Lots of unanswered questions about why this particular airplane was singled out.
It’s pretty clear from the flight path and the location of the shootdown site that the plane was not a military transport or danger to anyone on the ground as it was within 3 minutes of being in Russian airspace.
So what were those who pushed the button thinking????