Russia’s Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov and Chief of the Air Force Main Staff, Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev participated in a media conference in Moscow on July 21, 2014. Their attempts at deflecting the blame were less than subtle. Russia’s military officials asked traditionally loaded questions along the lines of the infamous presupposition: “When did you stop beating your wife?” One of the chief claims in this presentation was cited by Russia Today as follows: “Why did #Ukraine SU-25 fly same path as #MH17, simultaneously at same altitude?”

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Notorious Girkin birthed one of the most outlandish allegations, claiming that all of the passengers on the Malaysia flight were already dead, prior to the plane being shot down. To buttress this allegation, Russian media raised the question of why the passports of the victims appeared to be so clean, as though they were brand new. This red herring may indeed impress some people in Russia, where the passport has to be shown even when you’re simply taking out the trash. This approach is drastically different from the West, where the passport is used mainly for international travel. Girkin likely borrowed this twisted tail of “corpses on a plane” from a British TV Series, “Sherlock.” Girkin’s lame attempt of convincing the world that his group of merry terrorists didn’t murder hundreds of innocents, “because they were already dead,” only magnifies their obvious culpability.

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Russian mainstream media often relies on unnamed social media users and self-proclaimed experts, without fact-checking any of their claims. Russia Today found someone claiming to be “Carlos,” an alleged Spaniard, working as an air traffic controller in Kyiv’s international airport, Borispol. Without ever fully identifying himself, “Carlos” Tweeted in Spanish that Ukrainian jets were following the passenger plane and shot it down. Numerous prominent news outlets picked up this ridiculous story, including television channel Russia 24, the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda channel, Rossiiskaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda.

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The same terrorists who first proudly boasted they had the Buk system, then categorically denied it after shooting down MH17, now say they do have Buk, but it is “broken.” It should be noted that the terrorists previously claimed that should Buk malfunction, they could easily fix it up and use it to shoot down planes “like taking candy from a baby.” Russian news media gushed about the so-called “rebels” who will “guard the skies” with their new Buk system. Russian Twitter trolls, working in tandem with propagandists and the media, spread “happy news” about repaired Buk being ready for use as of July 14, 2014.

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“Russia One” television channel and other mainstream media in Russia would have you believe that OSCE has full trust in the “rebels”and has been granted full access to conduct a thorough investigation. In reality, OSCE report complains of “visibly intoxicated and aggressive” terrorists, who have given the investigators very limited access. Journalists on the scene report that victims wallets have been completely emptied, their belongings were looted and corpses ignored, while the terrorists took shameless selfies on-site.

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