WHY PUTIN WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER

It is certain that a Russian made anti-aircraft missile fired by Russian armed, trained, and commanded Ukrainian "separatists" shot down Malaysia Air flight MH-17 last week killing all 298 passengers and crew aboard.

Yet even if this was a conscious act perpetrated by the Russian government under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, we already know what is going to happen to Putin in particular and Russia in general. Nothing.

Despite widespread disgust at Russia’s involvement in this act of terrorism the odds are that Putin simply toughs it out and moves on. 

The Kremlin’s standard strategy will work once again:  1) obfuscate and confuse the truth by spreading several made-up disinformation stories; 2) delay or block any attempt to find out what happened; 3) depend on European (and now American) cowardice in confronting the Kremlin; 4) double down in the face of criticism.

Obfuscation
Putin realized from the earliest moments that his thugs in eastern Ukraine, if not his army, were behind this operation. The last wreckage from MH-17 had hardly stopped bouncing when Russian media was reporting two different stories. These were for the consumption of its domestic audience and of subscribers to Ron Paul’s newsletters.

The first of these stories was than a Ukrainian fighter was responsible, via the always entertaining RT.com (which is short an anchor if anyone is interested in applying), the online website of the state propaganda organ, Pravda.

Another gem from RT.com was a second theory – that Vladimir Putin was actually the target. Somehow while traveling from Brazil to Moscow the highly trained pilot of Putin’s official aircraft decided to joyride over Ukraine.

Alex Jones’s infowars.com, sort of America’s answer to North Korea’s media, is slavishly flogging a story that the Ukrainian army shot down the airliner as a provocation. When you read their source, a leftwing agitprop producer named Robert Parry, it is a compendium of Russian propaganda claims.

Plus, as expected, he veracity of the taped communications between various separatist commanders are being called into question by the Kremlin disinformation machine.

Delay
The unconscionable delay in allowing an accident investigation team to work the crash site is not an accident. Should the Russians allow an investigation, it would be allowed. The delay works to Moscow’s advantage.

The longer the bodies are allowed to decompose the less forensic evidence they will produce. The crash site has been pilfered further degrading the quality of the evidence. We can bet that Russian aviation investigators are on the scene and by now have identified those sections of the wreckage which would show the tell-tale signs of an external explosion.

Whenever international investigators are allowed on the scene they will undoubtedly find nothing that can unequivocally point to a missile explosion as the cause of the crash.

European vulnerability
The Dutch may be upset and using social media to protest but they are the Dutch and it is social media. Neither factor is likely to play a large role in Putin’s strategic calculus. The fact is that Europe stood aside, nodding and pulling its collective chin, as Putin carved Crimea out of Ukraine.

Europe is dependent upon Russian energy supplies  and will tread carefully no matter how much it howls in indignation. Whatever sanctions Europe imposes one can be sure it will not imperil either Russian natural gas.

American irrelevance
Obama’s policy preference has been summed up as "leading from behind."

Indeed, Obama has gone to extraordinary steps to diffuse any possible effort at finding the truth behind the crash. On Friday (7/18), he called the incident a "global tragedy… an Asian airline was destroyed in European skies filled with citizens from many countries."

A global tragedy. Asians. Europeans. Many countries. One is hardly sure what this even means.

Yesterday (7/22), Obama seemed even weaker.

In this statement even though Obama correctly blames Russia as the proximate cause of the tragedy, he seems to take the entire issue of repercussions off the table. Russia is hardly concerned about "further isolation." Europe’s energy dependency and Obama’s weakness tells Putin that he has won.

Doubling down and driving on
There is no doubt that outside Russia this incident is not playing well. But the operative concept is "outside Russia." If there is one thing that Putin understands it is that his survival is tied to his popularity in Russia. He has portrayed Ukraine as a bogeyman peopled by neo-Nazis hellbent on abusing Russians he is bound to protect.

He can’t cut the Ukraine separatists loose even if he wanted to. His total control of media within Russia gives him an air of invincibility. Says a writer at Mashable.com:

Whether people think this Putin reality is really real is perhaps the wrong question to ask. The point of the propaganda machine is to keep people hooked and emotionally involved with a narrative fabricated by the Kremlin. …

On a more surreptitious level, Putin’s televised Potemkin world leaves the viewer with the feeling that, if the Kremlin is so powerful it can dictate reality, then it is far too powerful to resist. You watch television not to discover the truth, but to find out what those in power require you to repeat as the truth. It is a way of receiving instructions – an inheritance from Soviet times when the State would communicate its versions of events via Pravda.

Russian TV has already kicked into action: one story on the main, blue-chip evening news program argued Ukrainian forces meant to assassinate the President himself but confused the Malaysian plane with Putin’s personal plane.

Another story is that the Ukrainians and the Americans set the plane up by guiding it off course into the war zone. There can be more than one story of course. Best to have lots to entertain the audiences with.

The downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane, to Putin, is not a threat – it’s an opportunity. The downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane, to Putin, is not a threat – it’s an opportunity.

And there’s no one close to him who dares say otherwise.

In the end, Malaysia Air MH-17 will become an asterisk in aviation history joining other civilian aircraft that have fallen victim to military action. Putin can’t disavow the Ukrainian separatists because he created them and shaped Russian public opinion to support them. To disavow them would be to disavow himself.

Set against this is a feckless group of nations, ostensibly led by a feckless and disinterested American president, who will ultimately vote their economic and political interests and forget about this act of murder.

Erick Erickson is Editor of RedState.

Discuss this item on the forums. Click Here!