Horror at 30,000ft and how Putin's playing a ruthless game in the Middle East that should terrify the West 

Vladimir Putin’s Syrian soap opera has filled Russian television screens for weeks. The sight of sophisticated missiles smashing into terrorist hide-outs has sent the Russian leader’s popularity soaring to previously unseen heights.

Now, reality is intruding. The crash of Flight 7K9268 — with an onboard bomb planted by supporters of the so-called Islamic State as the most likely cause — highlights the potential cost of Russia’s interference in the Middle Eastern powder-keg.

Until recently, the Kremlin sought not to take sides in the world’s most unstable region. It kept good relations with both Israel and the Palestinians. 

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Vladimir Putin’s Syrian soap opera has filled Russian television screens for weeks. The sight of sophisticated missiles smashing into terrorist hide-outs has sent the Russian leader’s popularity soaring to previously unseen heights

St Petersburg mourns victims of plane crash that killed 224

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It was friendly with Sunni Muslim regimes such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq, with secular dictators such as Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, and with the Shia mullahs in Iran. 

But by intervening in Syria to support his ally President Assad, Mr Putin has placed his chips firmly on one side of the table. He and the Iranians are propping up the Assad regime, and infuriating most of the Arab world in the process.

In the short term, Mr Putin’s lightning campaign of air strikes on Syrian rebels looked like a stroke of genius. It humiliated the West which, thanks to the weak leadership of the Obama administration, has drawn ‘red lines’ on the Syrian issue but then failed to act on them when they were crossed.

It showed that Russia was back in action as a global geopolitical force — able to deal death and destruction thousands of miles from its borders.

That was hugely popular at home, where Russians are fed up with the humiliation and powerlessness they associate with the fall of the Soviet Union.

So Syria provided a useful distraction — from the failure in Ukraine, a country which has fought the Kremlin’s forces to a standstill, from Russia’s stagnant economy and crumbling infrastructure, and from the authoritarianism and corruption of the Putin regime.

If it turns out that a bomb did bring down the Russian airliner — in retribution for Putin’s aggressive campaign in Syria —Kremlin spin doctors will have some explaining to do. What has Russia really gained from its intervention in Syria? Islamist militants will always see America and Israel as their greatest foes, but why should Russia aspire to be in the firing line, too?

Does this video show ISIS shooting down Russian plane?

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The crash of Flight 7K9268 - with an onboard bomb planted by supporters of the so-called Islamic State as the most likely cause - highlights the potential cost of Russia’s interference in the Middle Eastern powder-keg

Investigators collect personal objects from Russian plane crash

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Mr Putin’s answer is clear: Russia is in the front line against Islamist terrorism.

He supported the Nato-led intervention in Afghanistan in the past decade. Russia does not want a Taliban-ruled country on the southern border of the old Soviet Union. Indeed, Russia berates Western countries for not helping more in its crusade against militant Islam.

It likes to point out that it has many years of bitter first-hand experience of Islamist terrorism close to home. Fearsome separatist Chechen gunmen from the breakaway Russian republic have mounted spectacular attacks in the heart of Russia.

An attack on a theatre in Moscow in 2002 took 850 hostages and ended in a bloodbath. In 2004, more than 1,100 people were taken hostage at a school in Beslan, a town in the north Caucasus near Chechnya. The result was hundreds of deaths. Apartment block bombings in Moscow in 1999 killed nearly 300 people.

Yet many are sceptical of the Russian official versions of these horrific events.

They note that the Russian authorities spectacularly botched their response to the attacks, and failed to investigate them properly.

The Russian fugitive Alexander Litvinenko, for example — who was fatally poisoned in London — believed that it was the Russian authorities themselves who were responsible for the apartment-block bombings.

The panic which ensued, he argued, stoked the climate of fear in which Vladimir Putin, then a non-entity who had just been appointed prime minister, became the most popular politician in Russia and a shoo-in to replace the ailing president Boris Yeltsin. Mr Putin himself angrily dismisses such talk.

Yet much about the official account is troubling. There were, in fact, bombings in three cities, and within a week a further ‘bomb’ — in the provincial town of Ryazan — was discovered by sharp-eyed residents. Sure enough, just a day later Putin ordered the bombing of the Chechen capital, Grozny.

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If it turns out that a bomb did bring down the Russian airliner — in retribution for Putin’s aggressive campaign in Syria —Kremlin spin doctors will have some explaining to do

Russia releases video of new air strikes in Syria

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Yet when the police arrested the perpetrators in Ryazan, they turned out to be not terrorists, but officials of Russia’s feared FSB security service, the heir to the old Soviet KGB.

In that vein, those who see the Putin regime as the epitome of devilry might even wonder if this tragedy in Egypt is in some perverse way a stunt to justify Russia’s military ambitions in Syria.

It is chilling to consider the reaction to those who questioned who was really behind the 1999 bomb attacks.

Lawmakers and journalists who tried to investigate the Ryazan events were jailed and intimidated. Several died mysterious deaths — including Mr Litvinenko, killed by a rare radioactive substance in 2006.

Many also note that Chechen fighters are now among the Kremlin’s most feared supporters. Far from crushing the breakaway republic, Mr Putin has won it over with money and favours. 

Under its eccentric and brutal leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya has long ceased to be any more than a nominal part of the Russian Federation. Elements of sharia law — including grotesque child marriages — are in force. And Russia’s security forces do nothing to restrain the orgy of violence and corruption which reigns in Chechnya.

That’s why many seasoned Russia-watchers believe that the Kremlin’s relationship with Islamist terrorism is not as simple as Putin likes to portray.

It represents a threat to Russia, but its very existence is also a useful propaganda prop to the regime, both inside and outside Russia. Faced with a choice between supporting Islamists and the Putin regime, the West will assuredly choose Russia.

First aerials of Russian plane crash wreckage in the Sinai

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Whatever the cause of the carnage over Sinai, one thing is clear: Russia is now inextricably involved in the cauldron of Middle East politics. That is bad news for the region, for Russia — and for us

And it is in Putin’s interests to create and sharpen that choice. In Russia, relations between the 20 million Muslims and 120 million non-Muslims are generally good. It is certainly home to Europe’s largest population of secular and peaceable Muslims.

Mr Putin himself makes every effort to foster integration — including giving his blessing to an enormous mosque which recently opened in Moscow.

But to play the Islam card by launching a vicious campaign against so-called Islamic State and others in Syria is to play with fire. Can the co-existence that currently exists in Russia survive the Kremlin’s military adventurism in the Middle East?

One great fear in Russia after the events of recent days is that the Putin regime could abandon its conciliatory approach to Muslims and stoke the fires of hatred. 

At the very least, the Kremlin propaganda machine will use the downing of the airliner over Egypt — if foul play is proven — as evidence that Russia must re-double its efforts in the Middle East. Certainly, it has the firepower to do so, with a number of fighter bombers and heavy weaponry already operational in Syria, not to mention the small matter of the 150,000 conscript soldiers Putin has just ordered should be brought to military readiness.

But as the Soviet Union learned all too painfully in Afghanistan during the war in the Eighties, and as Britain, America and other Western countries have learned there and in Iraq since, getting into a fight in the Middle East is simple. Getting out is hard.

A cynic might argue that we should welcome Russia getting bogged down in a Syrian quagmire. The more Mr Putin has to do there, the less time and energy he has spare to bully our allies in eastern Europe.

But such an argument is dangerously shortsighted. Mr Putin may be out of his depth — but that increases the danger that he will lash out or raise the stakes.

The last thing we want is clashes between Western military in Syria — now boosted by the arrival of American special-forces experts — and Russia.

Whatever the cause of the carnage over Sinai, one thing is clear: Russia is now inextricably involved in the cauldron of Middle East politics. That is bad news for the region, for Russia — and for us.

Edward Lucas writes for The Economist.