Will MH17 air crash damage Putin?
Right up until the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July, President Vladimir Putin's handling of the Ukraine crisis was seen in Russia as fairly successful, both strategically and tactically, BBC reported.
Russia was obviously supporting the militants in the Donbass region, while still pursuing a policy of plausible deniability. At the same time, it had joined Germany and France in a diplomatic effort to promote a political settlement within Ukraine that would also take Russia's interests into account.
The European Union was balking at further sanctions against the Russian government, with a number of countries resolved to protect their important economic relations. The Obama Administration's attempts to rally the Europeans around the sanctions agenda appeared largely ineffectual.
Sensing this danger, Vladimir Putin is pushing back hard against the US-backed version of the crash.
- Russian general staff officials are presenting their own evidence and are asking questions about the Ukrainian role in the crash
- The Russian president himself is talking to Western and Malaysian leaders and publicly supports an international inquiry
- At the United Nations, the Russian ambassador has supported a relevant resolution
- With the plane's black boxes found by the rebels and handed over to the international investigators, the inquiry is now starting in earnest
If the investigators' verdict does eventually fall against Russia it is not so much Vladimir Putin's integrity that will suffer, as respect for his strategic skill. He has, after all, never said that the rebels had nothing to do with the disaster; instead he blamed Ukraine for attacking them.
Mr Putin will survive politically, but will have to work hard to restore faith in him, and his good fortune.
Russia may, however, avoid the blame. And if it does, then the onus for the crime, and the responsibility, will be on others. And Vladimir Putin will have dodged that bullet, too.