MH17: EU and Russia in 'mirror image' worlds

People in the EU and in Russia are living in “mirror image” worlds in terms of perceptions of the MH17 disaster.

The killing, in July 2014, of 298 mostly Dutch civilians, over Ukraine came back into the spotlight on Tuesday (13 October), when a Dutch inquest published its findings on the events.

It said the airliner was shot down by a Russian-made Buk missile, without saying who fired the weapon.

The enquiry put victims’ relatives first, giving them its report before media in a closed briefing.

EU institutions followed suit.

The EU foreign service, in a statement, said: “Those who lost their loved ones have the right to know the facts”.

The Dutch findings corroborate the prevailing theory - that Russian forces shot down MH17 because they thought it was a Ukrainian military jet.

But the EU statement didn’t mention “Russia”, adding only: “States that are in a position to assist with the investigation and prosecution of those responsible must fully cooperate with the ongoing criminal investigation”.

It also published, on Twitter, an image of a victims’ memorial in Amsterdam.

For their part, Russian media and officials focused on technical details.

They gave wide coverage to a press briefing, also on Tuesday, by Almaz-Antey, the Russian firm which makes Buks.

The company invited 250 journalists to its event, where it said, using mathematical formulas and videos of trial explosions, that it stopped making the Buk model which hit MH17 back in 1986.

It added the Buk was fired from an area which implies Ukraine did it.

The Russian foreign ministry statement said it has “repeatedly voiced misgivings about how the [Dutch] investigation was conducted”.

It said it’s blocking a UN probe into who fired the Buk because the UN wants a kind of inquest which doesn’t square with its “proposals”.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s message was even harder.

Its PM and a former intelligence chief claimed they have new evidence that Russian special forces fired the Buk.

Mirror image

“We took very different approaches”, an EU source said.

“We focused on the moral principle that families need to know the truth. They [Russia] took a technical approach. Their approach is a technical blurring of reality”.

The contact noted that Russia’s media strategy has changed over the past 15 months.

In the immediate wake of the disaster, Russia’s main story was the Ukrainian airforce did it in a false-flag operation.

It also promulgated wilder theories - for instance, that the US intelligence service, the CIA, did it.

“They’ve stopped the conspiracy theories and acknowledged that MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made weapon. Now the debate is when it was produced or where it was fired from. So that’s a kind of progress”, the EU source said.

The contact added, however: “A clear majority of people in Russia don’t apportion any blame to Moscow and most people blame Kiev. In the EU, it seems to be the mirror image”.

Anton Shekhovtsov, a scholar of propaganda at Legatum, a British think tank, agreed.

He said Russia’s intial media strategy was “to confuse everybody”.

But when the Ukraine air-to-air missile story was widely debunked, it switched to technical details as “a last line of defence”.

“They have repositioned themselves to be in line with the major international investigation [that a Buk did it], while implying it came from Ukrainian-held territory”, he said.

He critcised what he called Ukraine’s “propaganda” on MH17, saying the claim it has new evidence is false.

Why?

Alexey Levinson, from Levada, an independent Russian pollster, also says most Russians think Ukraine shot down the flight, a “small proportion” think Ukrainian rebels did it, and “a few” people believe the CIA theory.

The EU source said the main goal of Moscow’s MH17 communications is to justify blocking the UN probe.

Shekhovtsov said it concerns Russia’s image on the world stage.

“Passenger planes are sacred”, he told EUobserver. “When the Soviet Union, in 1983, accidentally shot down a Korean airliner it was a PR disaster for the regime”.

Levada's Levinson added that MH17 is important in terms of Russia’s broad narrative on the Ukraine war.

“Russia has said from the beginning that it’s not involved. That it’s an inter-Ukrainian conflcit and that Russia is only providing humanitarian supplies”.

Syria

Shekhovtsov and Levinson noted that, Tuesday aside, Syria is now the main subject on Russian TV.

According to Levada, 72 percent of Russian people approve Russia’s bombing of “terrorists” in Syria. Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s personal approval rating also rose one point to 84 percent last month.

Levinson said Russian media switched from Ukraine to Syria to “have something new and fresh”.

“But it isn’t so succesful. Syria is too far away and Ukraine is too close [to Russia] in many respects”.

Shekhovtsov disagreed.

“I think the Syria story does appeal to the Russian audience and I find that quite frightening”, he said.

“Russia seem to be addicted to big news stories … so when Syria ends, Putin will think he needs another story to consolidate public opinion, to mobilise support”, he added.

“If you look at his presidency there’s been a big crisis almost every year, so that Russian society is kept in a permanent state of mobilisation”.