Putin most certainly is a strange one.. Condemns homosexuality, but then poses shirtless on horseback and shows his prowess with a rifle whilst wearing just a pair of trousers.. I wonder if he's yet to come out of the closet.
For all the Glasnost and all that barlocks that has supposedly taken place, Russia is still a very state-controlled country, where dissent is taken care of by a bullet in the head. It follows from years of the country being ridiculed by the rest of the world as it was shown that Communism clearly hadn't worked and Russia struggled to catch up with the Western world while we all stood back smirking with more than a huge dollop of schadenfreude. And we did. As soon as Putin realised he could wield some genuine power - with his oil and gas reserves especially - the rest of the world gulped and Putin postured. A very dangerous guy - a very fragile ego and lots of power. Sadly, a large tract of his population are also backward-thinking, ego-driven twits and are taken in by his posturing. A bit like Scottish Nationalists...
maybe it'll all part of The Plan - there's been plenty of academic papers written about the economic benefits of wars and global conflict, for some it's a time to make massive profits, post war economics booms are common place as everyone has to rebuild and reconstruct - even The Cow made productive use of a war, the most unpopular Prime Minister in history until the Falklands diversion helped her con the populous keep poking the bear and you'll eventually loose some digits
It's never a surprise how they behave over there, cover ups and corruption is just what you expect. The finger should point more at those who allowed a commercial airline to fly over such a volatile area in conflict. An Antanov Ukrainen transport plane was shot down on monday at a height of 21, 000 feet and commercial airlines were still flying over the same area 3 days later, surely the US and maybe British intelligence agencies were aware of this.
Some airlines continued to fly over as it was considered safe at the height they flew at. Others such as Virgin and BA took a detour. Malaysian Airways are not having a good year.
Cover ups and corruption are not reserved just for them, the world world full of it, look at this country and what's coming out of the woodwork at the moment, ok it not shooting down passenger jets, but its just as absurd.
The difference over there is that all the international observers see it happening and can do very little if anything at all. How frustrating it must be when they can see all the evidence disappearing and it appears they have concerns when it comes to respecting the dignity of those who have died, terrible for the families to say the least. It would've been interesting if it had been a US airline with mainly there own citizens.