It's hard to hide a crash, but it's easy to downplay one. Threaten a few witnesses, pay off a few bereaved families and you can turn a catastrophe into a minor incident.

Russian warships in the Black Sea have been "catching fire" at a suspiciously high rate since February 2022. Same for petroleum facilities and ammo dumps near the Ukrainian border. We all know what really happened, but the Kremlin can spin a line and nobody who saw what actually happened is brave or foolish enough to contradict that line.