with Igor Girkin after removing his statements on working for Russia's Federal Security Service and chaos among pro-Russian militants. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Following the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, an article in the Indonesian version of Business Insider described the way that Russia Today was covering the incident as "ridiculous" and "in the only way it knows how: Blaming everyone except for the Russian government" while Daniel Drezner noted how the Russian media narrative of the Malaysian airline shoot-down was a "grab bag of conspiracy theories" and suggested that Putin could become trapped by the nationalist rhetoric created over the incident. The Associated Press reported that the theories presented by Russian broadcasters and newspapers "vary wildly in content" but "all point the finger at Ukraine. None admits the possibility that Russia may bear responsibility." Julia Ioffe of The New Republic wrote that they were "peddling conspiracy theories" and "trying to muddy the water". Writing for The Atlantic, Peter Pomerantsev said "[Russian media] were trying not so much to convince viewers of any one version of events, but rather to leave them confused, paranoid, and passive—living in a Kremlin-controlled virtual reality that can no longer be mediated or debated by any appeal to 'truth.'" Sergei Loiko, a Los Angeles Times correspondent interviewed by Novoye Vremya Ukraine, criticized Russian channels, saying "there were no reasons for [this war]. They are all fictional. They are built on lies, spread by Russian television. There was no reason for people to kill each other. It is a theatre of the absurd." In an article for The Irish Times, Conor O'Clery wrote, "When leafing through Zhirinovsky's rag in Vnukovo airport it occurred to me how close his extreme outpourings are to those emanating from the mainstream Russian media." Russian media and the media in the rest of the world Timothy D. Snyder criticized presentations of Russian-speakers in Ukraine which portrayed them as ethnic Russians who desired Russia's "protection". In October 2014, Taras Kuzio wrote in the Financial Times that "the world view created by Putin's state controlled media has never corresponded to reality. Putin always mixed up "Russian speakers" with "Russians" in Ukraine, believing they were one and the same. So he was always unable to fathom the fact that a large proportion of Ukrainian armed forces and National Guard are Russian speakers." The Russian media's depiction of the mainly Russophone city of Kharkiv