Vladimir Putin’s daughter has apparently fled her $3.3 million penthouse near Amsterdam as fury grows over Russia’s suspected involvement in the shootdown of Flight 17.
Maria Putin, 29, has become a target of outrage in the Netherlands since 298 people, most of them Dutch, were killed in the July 17 destruction of the Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine.

Aeroflot plane instead of MH17?

The head of Ukraine’s Security Service says pro-Moscow rebels had planned to shoot down a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane the day of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 to create a pretext for a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.

The separatists’ intention was to down Aeroflot flight AFL-2074 which was en route from Moscow to Larnaca, Cyprus, at approximately the same time and in the same air space as flight MH17, which passed over eastern Ukraine June 17, Interfax-Ukraine quoted Valentyn Nalyvaichenko as saying.

Nalyvaichenko said his agency reached the conclusion during the course of its own investigation into the downing of MH17.

He said that the Russian-provided Buk anti-air missile battery which was used to down MH17 had been transferred to Ukraine for that purpose, and that the Aeroflot plane with Russian passengers on board was supposed to have been shot down over territory controlled by Ukrainian government troops.

“This terrorist act, cynically, was planned as a pretext for the launch of an all-out aggression [into Ukraine] in response to the mass killing of innocent Russians,” Nalyvaichenko said.

There has been no immediate reaction from Moscow to the claim.