I'm looking at Russia, and thinking that it would be very convenient for them for Ukraine to drop off the news... which it largely did when this broke.
Now what could cause that - perhaps a good mystery. Everyone likes a good mystery.
Baikonur is a pretty f'ing good place to hide something like a 777, and is very proximal to the last possible position. Been there. Middle of nowhere. Airstrip is high security, remote, and has underground hangers. Local populace are very well versed in "I see nothing". It's also jurisdictionally weird, being a bit of Kaz rented to Russia as sovereign territory, meaning that any legal search would be very tricky to arrange to say the least.
Wait, you don't seriously think that Russia disappeared a Malaysian airliner (and hundreds of international citizens) to distract the world (?) from Crimea. That's just fucking absurd.
Oh, it's totally absurd - but what about this situation isn't?
It's pretty unlikely, though, given that it was loaded with Chinese nationals, and if they got rumbled... that'd be some fallout, hopefully just diplomatic.
The USA bombed Yugoslavia to distract the world from Bill Clinton fooling around with an intern. Putin plays to win and if he doesn't get caught, what's a couple hundred airline passengers to him?
Phil the Lewinsky affair (investigation/media sensation) went on literally for months and months (years?). Sit around long enough and the President of the US will do something that you can say "Look! A big decision. Clearly that's a distracting event!!" It's pretty intellectually weak buddy.
> The USA bombed Yugoslavia to distract the world from Bill Clinton fooling around with an intern.
That's a rather controversial claim. You could probably make the case that, instead, the Clinton Administration exploited the Right's obsession with the Lewinsky affair to drown out any serious domestic criticsm of its policy in Yugoslavia.
I don't hold much value to this theory for now, but it's not totally absurd given how many truthers think 9/11 was run by the US itself. This isn't as bad as that.
Now what could cause that - perhaps a good mystery. Everyone likes a good mystery.
Baikonur is a pretty f'ing good place to hide something like a 777, and is very proximal to the last possible position. Been there. Middle of nowhere. Airstrip is high security, remote, and has underground hangers. Local populace are very well versed in "I see nothing". It's also jurisdictionally weird, being a bit of Kaz rented to Russia as sovereign territory, meaning that any legal search would be very tricky to arrange to say the least.
Add that to the big old pile of theories.