When In Doubt, Blame The West
Since Russia's Syria campaign began, Kremlin officials and the state media have been framing it as a painless war that was boosting Moscow's international prestige. All patriotic citizens needed to do was sit back and enjoy the grainy footage of terrorists being obliterated by Russia's shiny new military machine.
The deaths of hundreds of Russian civilians threatened to change that, especially after Islamic State claimed responsibility and the evidence that a bomb -- and not technical failure -- destroyed the aircraft mounted.
Suddenly the Syria campaign wasn't cost-free anymore. So Russian state media did what came naturally: they blamed the West.
Sputnik got the ball rolling with a piece on November 6 claiming that "British officials have made an unseemly leap to speculate on a terrorist plot in the Russian airliner crash over Sinai last weekend." The story concluded: "The confidence by which these assessments of terror methodology are being made raises an even more troubling, darker question: was it really terrorists, or was it British MI6 agents palming the deed off as terrorists?"
On the same day, the conspiracy website WhatDoesItMean.com published an article claiming that Russia had captured two "CIA assets who are believed to have masterminded the downing of Flight 9268."
And then came Dmitry Kiselyov.
On his flagship news show Vesti Nedeli on Russian state television, the bombastic pundit suggested on November 8 that it was suspicious that after two years of U.S. air strikes against Islamic State, no American passenger planes have been targeted. And yet a Russian civilian aircraft was downed after just 40 days into Russia's military campaign in Syria.
Kiselyov went on to suggest that the United States and its allies cut a deal with Islamic State "not to touch the civilian aircraft of the Western Coalition."
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