Israeli Satellite Destroyed in Eastern Russia September 1st

On September 1st Israel’s “largest and most sophisticated” communications satellite explodes over eastern Russia.
Fireball in Russia’s Far East puzzles sky-watchers:

http://rt.com/news/russia-far-east-meteor-278/

Witnesses said the early morning sky over Russky Island, across
Vladivostok Bay, was lit up by a fireball, which later turned
into a flaming line that remained in the sky for an hour and a
half.

Russian astronomer Vladimir Surdin
linked the sighting to the launch of a Zenit 3SLB rocket from the
Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan on Sunday.

“The photos show that this was an artificial object,”
Surdin, of the Stenberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow, said. “It
was moving from west to east and was witnessed some 20 minutes after
the launch.”

This article has a comprehensive breakdown of the launch:
http://www.spaceflight101.com/zenit-3slb-amos-4-launch-updates.html

Lift off at 2:05am. Stage one and two
boosters were jettisoned 8min 32sec into the flight. You can see
from this ground track map that stages 1 and 2 were completed while
the rocket was still over Kazakhstan air space (so the “meteor”
wasn’t a booster section breaking up in reentry). The rocket’s Block
DM-SLB booster carried it over Russia.

Twenty minutes after launch a “meteor” was seen streaking across the sky West to East over Vladivostok:

More pictures and video:
http://teh-nomad.livejournal.com/1850012.html

Translated from the site:
This morning, September 1, at 07.26 in the sky over the Primorye meteorite
exploded. According to eyewitnesses, the explosion occurred at an
altitude of about 15 kilometers from the Earth.
Flight of the heavenly bodies could see residents Artem. Meteor flying in the
direction of Partizansk in the sky and crashed into hundreds of small pieces.

The MSM claims the launch was successful:
Israel’s main aerospace and defense company says it has launched into space the country’s
“largest and most sophisticated” communications satellite.  State-owned Israel Aerospace
Industries Ltd. said Sunday that it launched the Amos 4 satellite from a Russian-operated space launch base in Kazakhstan the previous night.
Space Communication Ltd., the Israeli company operating the satellite, said the Amos 4 will be operational
within two months and will provide video distribution and broadband services to Russian and Asian internet and communications companies.
Israeli Science and Technology Minister Yaacov Peri said space-related matters are “critical to
Israel’s security.”
The Israeli military and Defense Ministry had no comment on the launch.
This article was submitted to Israel’s military censor, which ordered deletions.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/israels-biggest-telecom-satellite-goes-orbit-kazakhstan-8C11055432

So according to the Israeli military via NBC news the launch went off without a hitch.
I also stumbled on this- A Russian rocket launched from the same site went down in flames in July:

A Russian Proton-M rocket upended itself less than a minute after
launch Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, exploding
in a fireball of toxic chemicals.
The rocket was supposed to put three of Russia’s Glonass global
positioning satellites into orbit, but during its ascent, it rolled
over and blasted its way back downward toward the Kazakh steppes,
breaking apart just before hitting the ground.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/russian-rocket-takes-nosedive-after-launch-kazakhstan-6C10511650

A Russian rocket crash yesterday (July 1) was likely caused by an
emergency shutdown of the booster’s engines 17 seconds into the
flight, according to news reports….
This was the fifth major Proton rocket launch failure since
December 2010, with the most recent in December 2012, when a Proton
booster launched a telecommunications satellite into the wrong
orbit.

http://www.space.com/21811-russian-rocket-crash-details-revealed.html

An inexplicable emergency engine shutdown 17 seconds into flight?

5 accidents since 2010?

2010….. mechanical failure…. why does that sound familiar?

STUXNET.

http://vimeo.com/25118844

The West will not allow Russia to complete its GPS network. Is
Russia returning in kind? And possibly with the enemy’s own weapon?