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“You mean you can’t think of an easier way to kill someone than shooting a President’s plane out of the sky as they make a publicized visit to Russia. You can’t be serious. “

You should be made aware that there was more than just the president on that plane, and it is quite possible the concentration of senior officials was part of the motivation for the event in the first place. There is no way to take out so many top officials in the pole govt individually without some PR problems. Here, the main issue is the initial information control after the crash, which russia handled well. Most of what russia reported, which created a strong impression of total polish fault/multiple landing attempts/bad weather, has been directly contradicted by the black boxes, as I understand it. This was the first landing attempt, and the plane was using exact landing info given by ATC (I don’t speak polish (do you?) but this is what is transcripted.)

BUT, we are over a month down the line. Initial spin control is everything - surely you know this, having had a chance to observe our own government and media do it time and time again. Russia fully expects the eastern european governments to believe they did this, and in fact that is a very valuable object lesson in their view ‘ look what we did, and no one is going to do anything to us.’ and they are correct. You do realize what a chilling message is sent by the perception that russia has assassinated so much of the polish leadership, and gotten away with it? The synchronicity of the katya massacre anniversary simply elevates this from brutal and ruthless to brilliantly ruthless.

That said, I believe the cell video was unexpected. Unless someone links a detailed audio analysis of the gunshots, a person can speculate whatever they like as to their origin (if there was a sonic crack (e.g. they came from a barrel), most people would not expect to be from chambered rounds cooking off, in such nice timely fashion).