A somber President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down and punish those responsible for a bomb that brought down a Russian passenger jet last month, "wherever they are hiding." Intensified Russian airstrikes Tuesday hit the Islamic State (ISIS) stronghold in Syria that also is being pounded by the French military.
Flight KGL9268 was only 22 minutes into its journey when it disappeared from radar screens over the Sinai Peninsula, having apparently broken up in mid-air. But with a concrete explanation so far not forthcoming, what do we actually know?
No matter what caused the fatal crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, the answer will almost certainly hit Russia hard—but not President Vladimir Putin.
Egypt's foreign minister complained on Saturday that Western governments had not sufficiently helped Egypt in its war on terrorism and had not shared relevant intelligence with Cairo regarding the downed Russian airplane that crashed last week in the Sinai, killing 224 people.
British Prime Minister David Cameron declared Thursday it was "more likely than not" that a bomb brought down a Metrojet flight packed with Russian vacationers—a scenario that Russian and Egyptian officials dismissed as premature speculation.