When a bear is cornered it becomes angrier and more unpredictable.
That is where Vladimir Putin’s Russia has found itself since a Malaysian airliner was shot down out of the sky near the Russian border on Thursday. The president’s dream of making Russia a respected global player again has run into trouble at its first stop in Ukraine. On the defensive on all fronts, Putin is cranking up, rather than toning down his impressive propaganda apparatus.
As evidence of Moscow’s deep complicity in the shooting down of the civilian jet piles up, it has become obvious that instead of using this horrific tragedy — which resulted in the murder of 298 people on board — as a way to find a solution to the Russian-inspired conflict inUkraine, the Kremlin intends to continue brazenly asserting that it bears no responsibility whatsoever for how a passenger jet and human remains ended up strewn across wheat and sunflower fields in eastern Ukraine.
The difference this time — unlike when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in March or during the four months that it has fomented political instability in eastern Ukraine — is that almost nobody outside of Russia believes anything that Moscow has to say any longer.
Peace in Europe is clearly in more danger than ever from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea if an emboldened Russia believes such behaviour will continue to be free of consequences. Still, it remains an open question whether Europe, with its long history of appeasement and looking the other way, will finally join North America in taking harsh steps to freeze the Russian economy and conclude an emergency trans-Atlantic energy pact to control the fallout if Russia responds to punitive sanctions by cutting off energy supplies to the West.
At least for public consumption, Russia has a starkly different interpretation of what happened last week in the skies over the Ukrainian-Russian border. Setting aside some of the wildest claims by Moscow’s yellow tabloids about how those killed in the crash were already dead before the missile struck, a good starting point is the sharp disappointment that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have repeatedly expressed over the lack of access they have received to the crash site, which is in rebel-held territory.
Russian state media have made no mention of any such difficulties or the way masked men with assault weapons were overseeing the bodies being “piled in a heap” in refrigerated railway cars, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Rather, as RIA Novosti reported on Sunday, “by taking its time” it was Kyiv that had caused the delays in reaching and collecting the bodies of the crash victims.
Another report by Novosti claimed this weekend that the OSCE had found no problem with how the bodies were being handled. In fact, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who lost more than 150 compatriots in the crash, has expressed his outrage to Putin over Russia’s handling of this issue.
As for who was responsible for the missile launch, Itar-Tass, said Sunday that a “reputable” Russian expert had told the state-run news agency that a tape posted by Ukrainian security services on the Internet only hours after Thursday’s incident in which Russian-backed separatists spoke of shooting down a civilian airliner, was “a fake” that had been patched together from three different recordings.
That is where Vladimir Putin’s Russia has found itself since a Malaysian airliner was shot down out of the sky near the Russian border on Thursday. The president’s dream of making Russia a respected global player again has run into trouble at its first stop in Ukraine. On the defensive on all fronts, Putin is cranking up, rather than toning down his impressive propaganda apparatus.
As evidence of Moscow’s deep complicity in the shooting down of the civilian jet piles up, it has become obvious that instead of using this horrific tragedy — which resulted in the murder of 298 people on board — as a way to find a solution to the Russian-inspired conflict inUkraine, the Kremlin intends to continue brazenly asserting that it bears no responsibility whatsoever for how a passenger jet and human remains ended up strewn across wheat and sunflower fields in eastern Ukraine.
The difference this time — unlike when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in March or during the four months that it has fomented political instability in eastern Ukraine — is that almost nobody outside of Russia believes anything that Moscow has to say any longer.
Peace in Europe is clearly in more danger than ever from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea if an emboldened Russia believes such behaviour will continue to be free of consequences. Still, it remains an open question whether Europe, with its long history of appeasement and looking the other way, will finally join North America in taking harsh steps to freeze the Russian economy and conclude an emergency trans-Atlantic energy pact to control the fallout if Russia responds to punitive sanctions by cutting off energy supplies to the West.
At least for public consumption, Russia has a starkly different interpretation of what happened last week in the skies over the Ukrainian-Russian border. Setting aside some of the wildest claims by Moscow’s yellow tabloids about how those killed in the crash were already dead before the missile struck, a good starting point is the sharp disappointment that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have repeatedly expressed over the lack of access they have received to the crash site, which is in rebel-held territory.
Russian state media have made no mention of any such difficulties or the way masked men with assault weapons were overseeing the bodies being “piled in a heap” in refrigerated railway cars, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Rather, as RIA Novosti reported on Sunday, “by taking its time” it was Kyiv that had caused the delays in reaching and collecting the bodies of the crash victims.
Another report by Novosti claimed this weekend that the OSCE had found no problem with how the bodies were being handled. In fact, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who lost more than 150 compatriots in the crash, has expressed his outrage to Putin over Russia’s handling of this issue.
As for who was responsible for the missile launch, Itar-Tass, said Sunday that a “reputable” Russian expert had told the state-run news agency that a tape posted by Ukrainian security services on the Internet only hours after Thursday’s incident in which Russian-backed separatists spoke of shooting down a civilian airliner, was “a fake” that had been patched together from three different recordings.
Note EU-Digest: it is high time for the West to take some joint action - Putin must be made to understand that they can't get away with this kind of uncivilized behavior.
Read more Fisher: Russia’s Vladimir Putin cranks up Soviet-era propaganda machine
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