Why Putin Cannot Confess, Deny, Or Allow A Credible Investigation of MH17

A Google search for “Who Shot Down Malaysian Airlines 17?” elicits a plethora of innocuous-sounding Kremlin sites (Globalnews, Express, Storyleak) claiming that either a Ukrainian fighter or a Ukrainian missile shot down MH17 to cast blame on Russia. Western media, in contrast, still write in cautious tones. After all, they say, the matter is under investigation.  BBC cautions that getting to the truth is a “Herculean task” and that “alternative scenarios” must be disproved. The New York Times leads with the headline “Little Certainty 1 Year after Airliner Shot Down in Ukraine.” Such hemming and hawing raises the doubts for which Russian propaganda strives.

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Is The MH17 Joint Investigation Team Avoiding The Question Of Kremlin Guilt?

That the JIT has yet to interview Russian and separatist officials and officers having intimate and invaluable information about the shooting down of MH17 seem to suggest a reluctance, if not cowardice, to bring the real perpetrators of the disaster to justice. Putin and the Kremlin need not worry. Even if the JIT got its act together and started to move up the ladder, Putin could grant Strelkov and Bezler et al either parliamentary immunity or an unexplained disappearance.

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Was Aeroflot 2074 The Real Target Of The Russian Missile? Who Is "Upstairs"?

I have no special knowledge of whether or not Russia intended to shoot down Aeroflot 2074. I, like most others, hope it is not true. If true, we live in a highly dangerous world, in which a head of state, unconstrained by moral norms, will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. If true, Vladimir Putin, the unchallenged leader of an energy-rich, nuclear power, is willing to sacrifice 180 innocent Russian men, women, and children to further his own political goals. The order for such a plot would have to come from Putin’s desk. No rogue FSB-GRU operation of this magnitude is thinkable in Putin’s so-called power vertical.

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