A Russian company has had to defend itself for producing a children’s bed shaped like a Buk missile launcher.
Days after a Dutch-led international investigation found that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 had been shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 by just such a missile launcher, the St Petersburg-based children’s furniture maker CaroBus attracted criticism for its bedframe, which includes a Russian flag and a base that lifts to resemble a missile ready for launch.
“I don’t see anything abnormal in a bed like this,” the director of CaroBus, Anton Koppel, told the Russian news site Fontanka. “Some (children) become doctors, some bakers, and some soldiers.”
The bed, of which CaroBus has sold about 10, was part of a “future defenders of the motherland” series. It has prompted an outcry in comments on the product page. “Will there be burnt toys as a bonus?” one user wrote.
“Is this some kind of joke?” journalist Oleg Kashin wrote about the Buk bed on Facebook.
Moscow has denied the Dutch investigation’s findings that a Buk crossed into Russia-backed separatists’ territory in Ukraine. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, declined to apologise for the disaster, arguing the inquiry had not named those suspected of firing the missile.
