When faced with the choice between an overly complex and intricate conspiracy and a simple, stupid fuck up, I go with the fuck up.
Oh, there was certainly a stupid fuck up.
There's another conflict going on right now that's competing for what used to be called column inches in the news.
A rag tag bunch of freedom fighters/terrorists (depending on which side of Abraham you fall on) have been fighting a first world military over a little strip of land.
The rag tag guys are supported by a regional power known to scrap occasionally with western powers - albeit by proxy - and while that regional power has not inconsiderable military capacity, what do they give the freedom fighter/terrorists?
Parts.
They don't even give them arms. They give them the parts and the know-how necessary to construct wildly inaccurate rockets which may or may not be powerful enough to damage a roof or two should they hit somewhere near their intended target.
Why does this regional power in question only give the people they support shitty rocket parts? Because for all the rhetoric about them wanting to "destroy" Israel, Iran is smart enough to know that if they handed any of their arguably more advanced weapons systems over to Hamas, Hamas would use them to cause some actual damage and the blow back would head right back to Tehran.
Putin, for all his shirtless horseback riding machismo, is apparently a few orders of magnitude more stupid than the Iranians. Vlad...Vlad...Vlad! If you're supporting "freedom fighters" in their "struggle against oppression,"
you don't give them strategic weapons or the ability to use them.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, Vlad! Of course these guys were going to fuck up. Instead of giving them a shitload of old Kalashnikovs, they got their hands on an advanced weapons system that can shoot down aircraft well out of the range of any shoulder launched missile, your guys taught them how to use it and/or gave them people who knew how, and said "hey, defend Mother Russia from any who would attack her!"
What's next, Vlad? Are the "separatists" going to get their hands on a nuclear attack sub, start "accidentally" sinking cruise ships while you sit there and claim you have no idea how they figured out how to fire the torpedoes?