New York // The US president Barack Obama demanded an immediate ceasefire in eastern Ukraine to allow for a credible investigation of a downed Malaysian jetliner, and confirmed that the plane was hit with a missile fired from territory held by pro-Russia rebels.
“We have confidence in saying that that shot was taken [from] territory that is controlled by the Russian separatists,” Mr Obama said, adding later, “We don’t have time for propaganda … we need to know exactly what happened, and everybody needs to make sure that we’re holding accountable those who committed this outrage.”
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency session earlier on Friday and called for a “full, thorough and independent international investigation” of the plane crash, which killed all 298 people on board.
Mr Obama said the US would “hold all [Security Council] members, including Russia, to their word … evidence must not be tampered with, investigators need to access the crash site”.
He confirmed that one Amreican citizen was aboard the flight.
So far, no official investigative body has been given charge of the crash site in rural eastern Ukraine, which remained unsecured on Friday. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sent a team of monitors to the site, but they later reported only limited access to the wreckage.
Rebel groups in the area gave conflicting accounts of who controlled the plane’s black box flight recorders, raising concerns that Russia or Ukraine may try to tamper with the recorders before an international investigation could begin.
“Much will depend on the outcome of the black box investigation,” Alisa Lockwood, a Europe analyst at IHS Country Risk, said.
Ukrainian insurgents from the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk told reporters they had recovered the black boxes and handed them over to the OSCE. Earlier reports claimed the insurgents had given the boxes to Russian officials.
Moscow’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, denied that Russia had any intention of acquiring the flight recorders and said that they should be given to international investigators.
Ukraine and Russia traded accusations of responsibility after the crash on Thursday, with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, saying Kiev was indirectly responsible because it was fomenting unrest in the ethnic Russian east of its territory.
An audio recording released by Ukraine’s intelligence agency of what it said was a conversation between a rebel commander at the crash site and a Russian military officer appeared to place blame on the rebels.
Ukraine’s interior ministry also released a video clip it claimed shows a truck transporting a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile launcher, with one of its four missiles missing, towards the Russian border some time after the crash.
The day before Thursday’s shoot down of the Malaysian plane, the Donetsk People’s Republic, bragged on social media about shooting down a Ukrainian transport plane in the same area of the country.
“It is not possible for these separatists to be functioning how they are functioning, to have the equipment they have ... a group of separatists can’t shoot down military transport planes … without sophisticated equipment and training that is coming from Russia,” Mr Obama said.
US intelligence officials were also reported on Friday to have confirmed that the Malaysian plane was shot down by separatists using Buk missiles, though they cautioned that their investigation was not complete.
The day before the downing of the Malaysian jet, Mr Obama announced a raft of additional sanctions on Russian officials and businesses, including the manufacturer of the Buk missile systems, Almaz-Antey. US officials said the new sanctions were partially a reaction to American intelligence concluding that Russia was continuing to allow the flow of fighters and heavy weapons across its border into Ukraine.
At a Pentagon news conference on June 30, the Nato supreme commander, Gen Philip Breedlove, said that Russia was providing air-defence training to Ukrainian rebels on vehicle-borne systems such as the Buk missiles, which can reach an altitude of 72,000 feet.
“We have not seen training of MANPADS,” he said, referring to shoulder-launched missiles. “But we have seen vehicle-borne capability being trained.”
An adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister said the Malaysian plane was flying at 33,000 feet when it was hit.
Amateur video footage taken just after the main segments of the jet crashed into the ground, showed a huge plume of dark grey smoke with glittering debris slowly falling to the ground.
The main crash site was 40km from the Russian border and spread across fields between the villages of Rozsypne and Grabovo, an area that has seen heavy fighting between Ukrainian troops and the rebels, and the thud of Grad missile strikes could be heard in the distance on riday as local emergency workers and volunteers searched through the still-smouldering debris.
They spread across the wheat and sunflower fields searching for bodies, and by midday had located 181 of the 298 who died in the crash.
Mr Obama’s strongly-worded demand was likely to ratchet up pressure on Mr Putin de-escalate the separatist violence. The US president also said he hoped the airline catastrophe would push European powers to push Russia harder on the violence in Ukraine. So far, EU members, who rely on Moscow for a large proportion of their natural gas demand, have only responded tepidly to US calls for more sanctions.
“[I]f Russia blames the Ukrainian side for this incident and continues to be intransigent, this will unite Europe in pursuing the more comprehensive sanctions that it has thus far held back from,” wrote Ms Lockwood, the analyst. “The costs to Russia of continuing to support separatist activity would be high.”
Ukraine’s aviation regulator declared a no-fly zone over eastern Ukraine, and most airlines have rerouted flights to avoid flight paths over the country.
Thursday night’s fatal crash of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane over Ukraine has had little impact on flights to and from the capital.
In the UAE, Saif Al Suwaidi, the director general of the General Civil Aviation Authority, told The National’s Arabic sister paper Al Ittihad that all UAE carriers have been told to avoid Ukrainian airspace, a move that affects 700 aircraft belonging to Emirates Airline, flydubai and Air Arabia.
Etihad Airways said it did not operate through Ukraine, so its flights wre unaffected.
Emirates Airline said its flights to Kiev had been suspended with immediate effect.
“Emirates flights to and from the USA and other European destinations fly a different route and are outside the zone where the incident involving MH17 occurred,” a spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, has sent condolences to King Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah of Malaysia, and to Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, expressing his sincere sympathy with the families of the victims of the crash.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of Armed Forces, also sent condolences to the Malaysian premier.
tkhan@thenational.ae
* With reporting by Associoated Press