One of the first of the various bizarre theories to emerge from the Russian media’s coverage of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 downing was also one of the most outlandish: the Tale of the Spanish Dispatcher.
The night of the disaster, a certain “Carlos,” presenting himself as a Spanish air traffic controller working in Kiev, began Tweeting in Spanishthat Ukrainian jets, rather than separatists on the ground, had shot down the passenger plane. Russian media took the bait: “Spanish dispatcher: Two Ukrainian warplanes were near the Boeing before its disappearance,” read the headline on the Kremlin’s most propagandistic news outlet, Russia Today. Several major news outlets also picked up the story with similar headlines, including state channel Rossiya 24, the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda channel, and popular newspapers like Komsomolskaya Pravda and Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the official mouthpiece of the Russian government.
Alec Luhn 