A Plane Crash Won’t Weaken Putin’s Resolve in Syria

For days, unnamed Western intelligence officials and Western heads of state have been implying that a bomb could very well have downed the Russian Metrojet plane carrying 224 Russians to St. Petersburg after a sunny vacation in Sharm el Sheikh. By Friday, French news media were reporting that a “sudden and brutal event” heard on the plane’s black box recordings was the likely culprit. Even the Kremlin, which has been vociferously denying the terrorism connection, canceled all Russian flights to Egypt and began making arrangements to airlift tens of thousands of Russian tourists still in the country.