FREE now and never miss the top politics stories again. SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Sign up fornow and never miss the top politics stories again. We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

MH370, which had been travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. The Boeing 777 aircraft last communicated with air traffic control at 1.19am when the plane was flying over the South China Sea, before vanishing from civilian radar screens. This week marks the fifth anniversary since the jet went missing and now a new theory has emerged.

Aviation expert and science journalist Jeff Wise claimed during Channel 5’s “Flight MH370: Five Years On” documentary that Russia may be behind an elaborate plot to distract from the Crimea conflict – which was raging at the time. He said: "The plane was accelerating, it was climbing and that shows whoever was behind it knew how to fly a plane. "Whoever was flying the aircraft knew about dead air space in air traffic control, which suggests they were deliberately hiding it from view. "If this was an effort by Russia it could have put the plane directly on the path to Kazakhstan.

Jeff Wise has a new theory on MH370

It has been five years since MH370 went missing

If this was an effort by Russia it could have put the plane directly on the path to Kazakhstan Jeff Wise

"This happened in the context just after Russia had annexed Crimea and was getting a lot of heat.” Mr Wise, who graduated Harvard with a degree in evolutionary biology, claims it was an elaborate plan to turn the spotlight away from Russia. He added: “They wanted people to talk about something else and suddenly the world's attention was shifted to this. “I think the reboot of the flight systems is fishy and I can explain how it is possible to create data that looks like the plane is going into the Indian Ocean, but it is actually going in the opposite direction. "There could have been a Russian on board who interfered with the systems and created a false trail of breadcrumbs."

Captain Zaharie Shah has come under fire

A second Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot out of the sky just four months later over eastern Ukraine. Russia-backed rebels, armed with a missile provided by Moscow, are suspected of being responsible for the Flight 17 disaster – killing all 298 people on board. However, Mr Wise’s theory was not met with the same enthusiasm with the rest of the experts on the show. Aviation journalist David Learmount said: "Theories like this are great for James Bond but they make no sense in the real world.

MH370 went missing in 2014

"But it was not an accident – it as carefully planned and then carried out by someone on board. "If you are someone who wants to do something really clever and you really enjoy flying and the science of flying and you have the idea that the greatest thing would be to baffle the world and then die, then this could explain it."

Three pieces of the wreckage, including a wing flaperon, the iconic “No Step” piece and at least one section of the interior cabin, have been confirmed as having come from the missing Boeing 777 after washing up on islands off Africa’s south-east coast. However, integral parts such as the fuselage and the black box have never been found.

Zahid Raza was “gunned down” in the country’s capital of Antananarivo

A piece of the plane turned up on Reunion island

On August 24, 2017, Malaysian Consul in Madagascar Zahid Raza was “gunned down” in the country’s capital of Antananarivo. Many have pointed out the link between his death and his work to find missing parts of the doomed flight. Blaine Gibson, a US lawyer and amateur investigator of MH370, claimed his friend had been due to deliver new evidence to Malaysia before he was killed. Mr Gibson wrote on his blog in August 2017: “For the protection of those involved, we decided not to make this report public until the debris was safely delivered to Malaysia.