“Russia should step up and take responsibility”
How about those who directed the plane to flyover an active war zone? Those passengers never would have died that didn’t happen. Now that’s criminal.
SOVIET propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed “whataboutism”. Any criticism of the Soviet Union (Afghanistan, martial law in Poland, imprisonment of dissidents, censorship) was met with a What about... (apartheid South Africa, jailed trade-unionists, the Contras in Nicaragua, and so forth).
read more:
https://www.economist.com/node/10598774
Part of this attack is the reputation of Malaysia Airlines, but hundreds of planes chose to flew over this area during the week before the shooting, with the most frequent flyer being Aeroflot. Malaysian Airlines was only the 5th most frequent behind such reputable airline like Lufthansa.