This certianly does look bad. RT has a blurb up that shows that Putin's presidential plane was flying a similar route and happens to have very similar markings as the MA planes. Also heard that seperatists tweeted about shooting down a Ukranian cargo plane around the same time.
There are a lot of ways this could play out as a flase flag, or as mistaken identity, and most of them are completely contradictory to the others. The world has certainly become last stable recently. And, we're hitting Russia with more sanctions (and AK imports will get tougher, thanks Obama...).
Here are some scenarious that I could see being the case, and some commentary on each in green.
If the Ukranians did it:
-Trying to take out Putin, hit wrong plane. But, taking out putin would surely mean the end of Ukraine and nobody would feel too bad about it.
-False flag to pin it on the pro-Russians or Russia. Super risky, we can detect where missiles are launched from, and one exposed would catch hell from the world.
-Autolaunch (if their systems have it) kicked off without anyone meaning to shoot anything, system malfunction, or some other unintended firing. Systems are supposed to be very redundant for functionality and safety, but things to go wrong, people fat finger the keypad...
If the pro-Russian separatists did it:
-Thought they had a Ukrainian military plane, hit wrong plane (several Ukr military planes have been shot down recently). Realistic since people operating the system may not be actual military or in communication with military, and even military hit wrong targets all the time.
-Tried to take a pot shot to miss Putin and blame Ukr as a false flag, wrong plane and too accurate.Super-risky plan that is hard to pull off physically, even harder to cover up what really happened (we can detect where decent sized missiles are launched from).
-Took out the airliner as false flag to blame on Ukr, perfect excuse for Russia to move in.Wouldn't be the first false flag in the world, nor the last. Still very risky to execute and cover up.
-Autolaunch/accidental/etc Things to go wrong sometimes.
If the Russian military did it:
-Thought they had a Ukrainian military plane, trying too hard to help separatists.Big risk for little reward, nobody really cared they took Crimea and are supporting the separatists, just keep doing it rather than do something drastic like this.
-False flag to pin it on Ukr.Same as above, but much more risky. if it doesn't play out, Russia would be the butt of the world for a long time.
-Autolaunch/accidental/etc Things happen, etc.