http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world ... raine.htmlObama Points to Pro-Russia Separatists in Downing of Malaysian Airlines PlaneBy MICHAEL D. SHEAR, SOMINI SENGUPTA and SABRINA TAVERNISE
JULY 18, 2014
Malaysia Airlines Jet Shot Down Over Ukraine
WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday that the United States believed the Malaysia Airlines jetliner felled over eastern Ukraine was shot down by a surface-to-air missile from an area inside Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
Mr. Obama’s remarks at the White House were the strongest public suggestions yet from the United States over who was responsible for the downing of the jetliner, which exploded, crashed and burned on Thursday on farmland in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.
Mr. Obama said the loss of life was an “outrage of unspeakable proportions” and a “global tragedy.” He vowed to investigate exactly what happened to end the lives of “men, women, children, infants who had nothing to do with the crisis” in that region. Mr. Obama also said that at least one American was among the dead.
“We are going to make sure the truth is out,” Mr. Obama said, referring to what he described as a trove of misinformation that has already shrouded the plane crash.
“We don’t have time for propaganda,” Mr. Obama said. “We don’t have time for games.”
The president spoke hours after Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency Security Council meeting on the Ukraine conflict that there was “credible evidence” that pro-Russia separatists and their Russian associates in eastern Ukraine were responsible for the crash.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet in a commonly used air route over eastern Ukraine when it was struck on Thursday.
Both Russia and the separatist groups have denied any responsibility, and some rebel leaders have suggested that Ukraine’s armed forces may have shot down the plane. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has implicitly blamed Ukraine’s government, saying it created the conditions for the separatist uprising that has escalated into a major crisis. But Mr. Putin has not denied that a Russian-made weapon may have destroyed the aircraft.
Mr. Obama resisted blaming Mr. Putin personally, saying that the government does not know exactly who fired the missile that took down the passenger airline. But he made clear that he holds the Russians responsible for failing to stop the violence that made the shoot-down possible.
“We know that they are heavily armed and they are trained. That is not an accident. That is happening because of Russian support,” Mr. Obama said. He said it is “not possible for these separatists to be functioning they way they are” without Russian support.
The president said that the downing of the plane was a direct result of the ongoing violence in the region and he said that violence had been “facilitated in large part because of Russian support.”
Mr. Obama said that Mr. Putin could make a decision not to allow heavy armaments or troops to flow across the border from Russia into Ukraine. If Mr. Putin does that, he said, “then it will stop.”
In her remarks at the United Nations, Ms. Power said, “We assess Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 carrying these 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was likely downed by a surface-to-air missile, an SA-11, operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine.” She also said the United States could not “rule out technical assistance by Russian personnel” in operating the system.
The 15-member Security Council unanimously called for a “full, thorough and independent international investigation” into the cause of the crash. Jeffrey D. Feltman, the United Nations undersecretary general for political affairs, told the council that 80 children were among the dead.
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Scenes From the Malaysia Jet Crash Site
Scenes From the Malaysia Jet Crash Site
A Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 298 passengers and crew members crashed in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, and American officials said it was most likely shot down by an antiaircraft missile.
Video Credit By AP and Reuters on Publish Date July 17, 2014. Image CreditDominique Faget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Power’s assertions were substantiated by two senior Defense Department officials, who said Pentagon and American intelligence agencies had concluded that an SA-11 missile, fired from an area near the Russia border, had downed the plane.
That conclusion is based on an analysis of the launch plume and trajectory of the missile, as detected by an American military spy satellite. But the American analysis did not pinpoint the precise origin of the missile launch, from which side of the border it was fired, or who actually launched the missile.
Ukrainian officials, who have called the downing a terrorist attack carried out by the separatists, have referred to a different name for the missile, the Buk M1, which the Ukrainian armed forces possess and which may have been purloined by separatist fighters, was possibly responsible.
“The analysts are still trying to get detailed granularity on that,” said one senior Pentagon official. “Those are the million-dollar questions.”
There was also still no indication of motive, though most American analysts have concluded that the missile operators believed they were firing at a Ukrainian military plane, not a civilian jetliner.
At the crash site near the mining town of Grabovo, in rebel-held territory near the Russia border, a dispute was emerging over who seized the plane’s flight recorders, which could shed light on the last moments.
The voice and data-recording devices that had been aboard the Malaysia Airlines plane were said to be missing from the crash site.
Kostyantyn Batozsky, adviser to the Donetsk regional governor, said in a telephone news conference that the aircraft voice and data recording devices had been recovered by workers from the Ukrainian Emergency Services Ministry who had been granted access to the crash site by rebels who control the region surrounding it. But he said he did not know the current location of the devices or who had possession of them.
At the same time, Aleksandr Borodai, the pro-Russian rebel who leads the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, told reporters that his group had the so-called black boxes and intended to turn them over to officials of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which will be assisting in securing the scene. Mr. Borodai said that Dutch and Malaysian officials had informally asked his group to leave the debris and bodies untouched.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists has been marked by the successful use of missiles against aircraft at higher and higher altitudes.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry, in denying any responsibility, noted that units of the Ukrainian Army possessed the Buk M1 air defense missile launchers that has been mentioned as the possible weapon that felled the jetliner. Much of the speculation surrounding the crash has focused on that system, particularly since the pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine bragged on social media in late June that they had taken possession of a Buk system after capturing a Ukrainian military base.
The crash remained the subject of intense debate in Grabovo, as residents tried to come to grips with what had unfolded in the fields where they work, just yards from their homes.
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Four rebels in fatigues were wandering through the ruins, looking through people’s belongings and riffling through guidebooks and bags. When asked who was responsible for the crash, they looked incredulous and said that it had of course been the Ukrainian military.
“This wasn’t ours,” said a rebel who identified himself only as Alexei, standing looking at an overhead bin in the grass with a rifle over his shoulder. “Why would we do this? We’re not animals.”
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