Russian news agency commemorates MH17 crash with trivia quiz (then apologizes)

For the one-year anniversary of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti created a trivia game called “Boeing 777 Crash Investigation: One Year On.” The news agency has since apologized and removed the content.

After the quiz was removed from the website, the agency Rossiya Segodnya (which oversees RIA Novosti) issued a press release calling the game despicable, and stating that the authors and editors who made the quiz will be disciplined and possibly fired.

In the game, readers were invited to answer questions about when the crash occurred, the airline, how many people were on board, and about who is leading the current investigation into the crash.

In some of the questions, readers had to guess the source of certain quotations. For example, one question read: “Who said that the plane might have been shot down by a land-to-air missile launched from militant-controlled territory?”

If a question was answered correctly, a message of congratulations appeared. The quiz allowed readers to post their results on social media, also accompanied by a congratulatory message about the results.