Tensions Mount Over Ukraine Jet Crash as Corpses Moved
Ukraine officials pressed their case
that Russia supplied the missile they say brought down a
Malaysian Airlines jet killing 298 people, as investigators
struggled to begin their work at a crash site patrolled by pro-Russian rebels.
An official with the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, Michael Bociurkiw, said the atmosphere at
the site yesterday was “surreal.” As many as 900 rebels are
putting pressure on investigators trying to do their work,
according to Ukrainian Deputy Premier Volodymyr Hroisman.
Ukraine separatists had in their possession “at least”
three Russian-made surface-to-air missile systems, known by
their NATO designation SA-11 Gadfly, Ukraine state security
official Vitaliy Nayda said in Kyiv yesterday. He said that as
part of a cover-up of who fired the missile, three of the
systems were transported back to Russia just hours after the
plane was shot down. Nayda displayed photos which he said showed
them on the road to the Russian border.
The downing of the aircraft has become a diplomatic flash
point, with Russian President Vladimir Putin blaming Ukraine for
the tragedy while European government leaders are urging him to
force the insurgents to back down and allow unfettered access to
the crash site. The crash threatens to escalate five months of
conflict in eastern Ukraine, sparked by Russia’s annexation of
Crimea.
Russia has denied it supplies arms to the separatists and
the rebels have denied they fired the missile.
‘Heavily Armed’
The OSCE’s Bociurkiw provided a phone briefing from the
crash site near Torez, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the
Russian border in eastern Ukraine. “There is a lot of security
here, with many heavily armed people,” he said.
The 24-member OSCE team saw unidentified people moving
bodies to the side of the road, he said.
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry,
told reporters in Kyiv that “Russian mercenaries loaded bodies
onto trucks” and delivered them to Donetsk to search for debris
in the victims from the missile believed to have downed the
plane on July 17.
He suggested the rebels were examining the bodies to find
and hide evidence of their side’s culpability for the missile’s
firing.
The Gadfly, known locally as the Buk-M, is a radar-guided
weapon that can find a target at a range of 140 miles and reach
altitudes as high as about 72,000 feet, according to the army-technology.com website.
‘Question No. 1’
While Ukraine officials have called for a special cease-fire zone to be honored at the crash site, Hroisman said that
neither the separatists nor their Russian allies have provided
guarantees for security.
“We are doing our best to get access and to be able to
transport bodies to send them to their homelands after the
necessary examination,” Hroisman told reporters in Kyiv
yesterday. Body transportation “is the question No. 1 for us,”
he said.
The crash, which claimed the lives of all of those aboard
Flight 17 bound from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, has deepened
Europe’s worst political crisis since the Cold War ended.
President Barack Obama on July 18 said the U.S. had
determined the plane, a Boeing Co. 777, was struck by a missile
fired from territory held by pro-Russian insurgents. Obama, who
has said Russia is behind the arming of the separatists, also
decried what he termed Putin’s refusal to “de-escalate the
situation.”
Merkel-Putin Talk
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin spoke by phone
early yesterday and agreed that the International Civil Aviation
Organization, a United Nations specialized agency, should lead
the crash investigation. Both leaders also stressed the
necessity of ending armed clashes in southeastern Ukraine and
starting peace talks, according to a Kremlin statement.
As Ukraine accuses Russia of supplying the missile, Putin
has blamed the Kyiv government, saying the crash wouldn’t have
happened had it not fomented the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The disaster occurred hours after the U.S. and the European
Union imposed further sanctions on Putin.
Sanctions imposed by the U.S. since the Ukraine crisis
began have been more far-reaching than those adopted by the
European Union, though the plane disaster may alter that
disparity. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and Dutch Prime
Minister Mark Rutte said after a phone conversation yesterday
that the EU will need to reconsider its approach to Russia,
according to a statement from Cameron’s office.
‘Poorly Trained’
U.S. Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican who
heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, yesterday broached
his suspicions of a cover-up.
“I think what’s happened is a rather poorly trained
separatist group here probably have inadvertently shot down an
airliner and are now trying to cover this up,” he said on CNN.
“That’s the part you see on the ground.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has dispatched two
agents with training in forensics and crime scenes to Ukraine to
assist in collecting evidence at the crash scene, a U.S. law
enforcement official said. As of yesterday, they were waiting in
Kyiv for security conditions to improve before going to the
crash site, the official said.
An investigator for the U.S. National Transportation Safety
Board who left Washington on July 18 hadn’t made it to the crash
site as of late yesterday, said a person briefed on the matter
who requested anonymity in discussing it.
‘Human Tragedy’
Malaysia, which is suffering its second plane tragedy in
four months, sent Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai to Kyiv.
“Any action that can prevent us from learning about the truth
of MH17 cannot be tolerated,” he told reporters yesterday at
Kuala Lumpur International Airport, using shorthand for the
plane’s designation.
“Malaysia calls for all parties to protect the integrity
of the crash site and to allow the investigation to proceed,”
Liow said. “Yes, MH17 has become a geopolitical issue. But we
must not forget that it is a human tragedy.”
Australia’s foreign minister will go to New York to seek a
binding UN resolution on an independent probe.
At the crash site, OSCE’s Bociurkiw yesterday said his team
was trying to determine the identities of the people moving the
remains and who they represent. He said the jet’s flight data
recorders — known as black boxes — still haven’t been found.
The Ukraine government said rebels have taken at least 38 bodies
to Donetsk, the regional capital.
Limiting Access
In Grabovo, a village where much of the plane’s debris is
scattered, reporters found gunmen looking on as rescue workers
gathered bodies.
The gunmen, representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk
People’s Republic, let workers from Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry
to set up tents at the scene while limiting access to
international investigators.
At the Dutch embassy in Kyiv, people left thousands of
flowers, candles and toys to remember the travelers from the
Netherlands who died in the crash. The majority of the
passengers — at least 192 — were from the Netherlands,
including a Dutch senator who died with his wife and daughter,
and a University of Amsterdam academic, who worked to bring
cheaper AIDS drugs to Africa.
“I feel very sorry for all these innocent people who were
killed, and for the children,” said Halyna Vituk, 64, as she
broke into tears, dressed all in white and carrying sunflowers
and a candle at the embassy in Kyiv. “Putin should bear all the
responsibility. And of course, the separatists. But they will
not shoot without his order.”
When it was hit, Flight 17 was at about 33,000 feet (10,000
meters), taking a route over Ukraine that several other carriers
have been avoiding. The jet was at an altitude cleared for
commercial traffic, according to navigation agency Eurocontrol.
In March, Malaysian Airline Flight 370 vanished with 239
people on board en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. It has
yet to be located.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Daryna Krasnolutska in Kyiv at
dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net;
Daria Marchak in Kyiv at
dmarchak@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
John Fraher at
jfraher@bloomberg.net
Don Frederick, Nancy Moran