Story highlights Mark Galeotti: Expect brazen Russian propaganda after report on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 downing

Disinformation campaign likely to continue until it becomes something for historians to argue over, he says

Mark Galeotti is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague and an expert on Russian foreign and security affairs. Formerly professor of global affairs at New York University, he is now principal director of Mayak Intelligence. The opinions in this article belong to the author.

(CNN) The Russian disinformation machine will kick into overdrive now that Dutch prosecutors have delivered their report on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

The report's findings were clear: A Russian missile supplied by the Russian military and fired from territory held by Russia's local proxies downed the plane, killing all 298 people aboard. In response, going from Vladimir Putin's playbook, we can expect a furious, relentless, inventive and brazen propaganda campaign that will probably continue indefinitely, hoping to bury the truth in a mudslide of conspiracy theory, denial and rumor.

Is the truth out there?

The aim is not to prove any specific alternative theory, so much as to create the illusion of uncertainty.

Every arm of the Russian state is called on to play its part -- and they have been preparing for this report's release for some time.