President Vladimir Putin is missing a golden opportunity by not disowning the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Instead, as pro-Putin media and social network trolls invent increasingly fantastical versions of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Russia risks becoming a pariah even to developing countries that have sympathized with its anti-American stance.

…

I may have missed a few other colorful myths, but the general plan is clear: to sow doubt in the minds of ordinary Russians. “The more versions, the less clear it is, the less clear it is, the more time there is to work out the final version that will later become canonical,” columnist Oleg Kashin wrote on svpressa.ru.

As Kashin also points out, it isn’t Russian TV that writes the canonical version of events internationally. In the eyes of the world, Putin is as guilty as he is portrayed on Friday’s front page of the British tabloid, the Sun. If Putin keeps backing the insurgents until their inevitable defeat, his international isolation will deepen, as did that of the Soviet Union’s leaders after their jets shot down a Korean passenger jet in 1983, and former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi after the 1988 bombing of a PanAm airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. Malaysia, a Muslim nation that has long fought American influence, can hardly be expected to listen to Russian fairy tales about the crash. The developing world will now join the West in condemning the rebels — and Putin as their only ally. “It’s one thing to be the modest helper of some rebels,” former Russian diplomat Alexander Baunov wrote on Facebook. “It’s another thing to help insurgents who have perpetrated one of the biggest terrorist attacks in the history of aviation.”

By disowning the rebels immediately — in the form of criminal proceedings against the Russian citizens among them, the immediate withdrawal of any Russian aid for them and a public admission that it was their activity that led to the downing of MH17 — Putin could abandon the losing side while saving face. The window of opportunity for Putin to escape this losing war is shrinking, however, and he is unlikely to get a better chance.

It’s an interesting position, but politically how realistic an option is this for Putin? It seems like he’s locked himself into symbiosis with a far-right, know-nothing base that cares about little more than reclaiming past nationalist glory and hating the West out of shear jingoistic angst.

The economic leverage is certainly there. Russia was facing a poor economic outlook before the annexation of Crimea. Now they’re two rounds of sanctions deep, their credit rating has been cut to BBB-, one step away from junk bond status, then this absolutely colossal fuck up happens at probably the most inopportune time imaginable. However since continued and possibly drastically increased sanctions are basically a long term certainty now matter what he does now how far can he successfully back peddle while maintaining his base of support? Sooner or later the average Russian is going to feel the economic effects, but the dead enders might well be more forgiving of his tanking the economy than about abandoning Novorossiya. For one thing he can probably blame an economic disaster on external forces, but there’s no way he dodges the blame if / when he pulls out of Ukraine.