Russians awoke on Friday to news reports that bumbling Ukrainian troops had shot down a Malaysia Airlines (MAS:MK) jet after mistaking it for President Vladimir Putin’s official plane. Another theory: The Ukrainians intentionally shot down the jet at close range as a “planned provocation.” Or maybe there wasn’t a crash at all, and the bodies were those of passengers from Malaysia Air flight M370, which disappeared in March.

Most of these weird news reports aren’t coming from tabloids or fringe websites. They’re coming from Russia’s leading news outlets, which are almost entirely under state control. The report on the mistaken identification of Putin’s plane, for example, aired on Channel One, the country’s most popular TV network. The journalists never explained why the Ukrainians might have thought Putin was in the neighborhood, since he was attending a well-publicized summit in Brazil on the day of the crash.

State-owned news agency ITAR-TASS, meanwhile, put out a report disputing suggestions that separatist rebels may have hit the plane with a Buk surface-to-air missile. It quoted a spokesman for the rebels as saying they had no weapons capable of shooting down an airliner at 33,000 feet—overlooking that ITAR-TASS itself had previously reported that the rebels had seized Buk missiles from a Ukrainian military installation.

Story: The Malaysia Air Crash: The Finger-Pointing Doesn't Stop

Someone at state-run All-Russia State Television & Radio Broadcasting even appears to have edited a Russian-language Wikipedia article on plane crashes today, to say that the plane “was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers.”

And Sara Firth, a London-based correspondent for Russia’s international TV network RT, said today that she was quitting because RT was spreading “shockingly obvious misinformation.” She’s the second RT journalist to leave this year while accusing the Kremlin of shaping the network’s news coverage.

To outsiders, Russian media coverage of the Ukraine crisis may seem far-fetched, conspiracy-laden, and contradictory. But it’s effectively convinced Russians that the Ukrainian rebels need their help to fight brutal repression by Kiev. “Aggressive and deceptive propaganda, worse than anything I witnessed in the Soviet Union,” is how Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada polling group, described it to the BBC last month. Indeed, Levada surveys show that most Russians think their country should be doing more to support the rebels, including direct military intervention in Ukraine.

Video: Russia Goes on Defensive in Ukraine Plane Disaster

Until now, this has helped Putin withstand a storm of international criticism and sanctions that risk harming Russia’s ailing economy. Yet the inflamed public opinion could also make it harder for Russia to back away from the rebels if investigators find that they shot down a civilian aircraft with 298 people on board. Putin may find that his support for the rebellion has unleashed an “uncontrollable force,” says Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

“As pro-Putin media and social network trolls invent increasingly fantastical versions” of the crash, writes Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky, “Russia risks becoming a pariah even to developing countries that have sympathized with its anti-American stance.”

A major source of questionable information about the crisis has come from state-controlled Channel One. The network recently drew condemnation for a report claiming Ukrainian troops had crucified a small boy by nailing him to a billboard in the city of Slavyansk. No other news organization could find witnesses to the incident, which Channel One said took place before a crowd in the city’s central square. Among other dubious elements in the report was a glaring issue: There’s no billboard in Slavyansk’s central square.

Video: Hillary Clinton: MH17 Crash Should Outrage Europe

In its Friday report on the Ukrainians’ allegedly mistaking the Malaysia Air jet for Putin’s plane, Channel One said the Boeing (BA) 777 could be confused with the Ilyushin (UNAC:RM) II-96 used by the Russian president if seen from a distance. It would be hard to mistake them close-up, however, since the Ilyushin has four engines and the Boeing has two. Not to mention the Russian presidential insignia and other differentiating marks that would be easily visible at close range. Yet in a separate report, Channel One suggested that a Ukrainian fighter jet might have shot down the plane and even offered quotes from villagers near the crash site saying another plane had been flying alongside the Boeing before the explosion.

Out in Russian cyberspace, the theories get even weirder. One of the most fanciful contends that no crash occurred and that the scene was staged with corpses from the earlier Malaysia Air flight, which were sprinkled with fake passports and other items to throw investigators off the trail.

The media have “juggled different versions: Ukrainian fighter, Ukrainian rocket attack on Putin, and so on,” columnist Oleg Kashin writes on the Russian-language Free Press website. “The more versions there are, the less clear it is, and the more time there is to work out the final version that will become canonical.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-18/malaysian-air-shooting-russian-news-media-tries-crazy-theories

Not buying.  There are existing Threads ~ one of long duration where we are already discussing the matter.

Yep..but this thread is about Longy justifying his hero worship of the comb over kid  :D

Aussie wrote on Sep 5^th, 2014 at 7:03pm:

Not buying.  There are existing Threads ~ one of long duration where we are already discussing the matter.

well u seem to support Russian excuses.  I just gave you a handful to choose from!

there are dome pretty good ones too.  You could use them to excuse Putin a bit more.

I can see why you stopped being a lawyer.  anyone as daft as you  are with circumstantial evidence couldn't defend anyone.

oh poor diddum...  didn't you like the excuse that the Ukrainians crucified a boy on a nonexistant billboard???  that's right up your alley because as you know... there is no PROOF it didn't happen.

Longys love for Abbott is a lot like Menzies love for the Queen  :D :D

I did but see hom passing by
But I will love him till I die


—MeLieLongTime and Sprint

Maybe Longy is Abbott! They both love Putin' their Phutin their mouths. :o

As far as I know MH017 got directed south and lower due to a storm. The rebels saw it, assumed it was a Ukraine govt military plane and shot it down—it should NEVER have been directed to where it was.

Did the rebels use a missile supplied by Russia or one they captured by overrunning Ukrainian army bases? They had overrun 2.

St George of the Garden wrote on Sep 5^th, 2014 at 9:24pm:

As far as I know MH017 got directed south and lower due to a storm. The rebels saw it, assumed it was a Ukraine govt military plane and shot it down—it should NEVER have been directed to where it was. Did the rebels use a missile supplied by Russia or one they captured by overrunning Ukrainian army bases? They had overrun 2.

why does that change anything?  RUSSIAN backed rebels fired a missile at a airliner in clear skies in the middle of the day paint bright white. 

An airliner like two govt planes the rebels had shot down earlier that week. Remember the phone conversations you posted “No military [stuff] only civilian?”

This incident could have been used to inflict a defeat on the rebels but idiot Abbott turned it into a victory for them. Klutz, putz!

St George of the Garden wrote on Sep 6^th, 2014 at 9:13am:

An airliner like two govt planes the rebels had shot down earlier that week. Remember the phone conversations you posted “No military [stuff] only civilian?” This incident could have been used to inflict a defeat on the rebels but idiot Abbott turned it into a victory for them. Klutz, putz!

a 777 in clear skies during the day is NOTHING like a military plane.  and if you shoot without looking how does that in any way reduce your culpability?  and 150 places a day flew that route.  why did they not get shot down?

No, 150 planes a week did not fly that route—MH017 got diverted because of storms. Already two similar planes had been shot down that week. . .

Repetition MAY get a fact through MeLieLongTime’s skull but I have no hiogh hopes.

St George of the Garden wrote on Sep 6^th, 2014 at 9:45am:

No, 150 planes a week did not fly that route—MH017 got diverted because of storms. Already two similar planes had been shot down that week. . . Repetition MAY get a fact through MeLieLongTime’s skull but I have no hiogh hopes.

a regular diversion route for bad weather.  So tell me,  are you EXCUSING this act?

The moral of the story is dont fly over war zones no matter how high your flying.

Crikey you cant carry a bottle of water on a plane but the idiots fly over war zones....just how dumb are these people?

adelcrow wrote on Sep 6^th, 2014 at 9:56am:

The moral of the story is dont fly over war zones no matter how high your flying.

I would hope the moral imperative would be a bit more substantial than that.

longweekend58 wrote on Sep 6^th, 2014 at 10:08am:

adelcrow wrote on Sep 6th, 2014 at 9:56am: The moral of the story is dont fly over war zones no matter how high your flying. I would hope the moral imperative would be a bit more substantial than that.

Exactly. Mr Abbott is a hunk. That’s the only moral imperative we need here, you know.