HRABOVE, Ukraine/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laid out what he called overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as international horror deepened over the fate of the victims’ remains.
Kerry demanded that Moscow take responsibility for actions of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine whom Washington suspects of downing the jet with a missile, and expressed disgust at their “grotesque” mishandling of the bodies.
Television images of the rebel-held crash sites, where the remains of victims had lain decomposing in fields among their personal belongings, have turned initial shock and sorrow after Thursday’s disaster into anger.
Emotions ran high in the Netherlands, the home country of about two-thirds of the 298 people who died in the Boeing 777. The Dutch foreign minister has said the nation is “furious” to hear bodies were being “dragged around”, while relatives and church leaders demanded they be rapidly returned home.
But the departure of dozens of corpses loaded into refrigerated railway wagons was delayed yesterday as Ukrainian officials and rebels traded blame over why the train had not yet left the war zone, and where or when international investigators would be able to check it.
The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to vote today on a resolution that would condemn the downing of the plane and demands that those responsible be held accountable and that armed groups not compromise the integrity of the crash site.
In an apparent bid to compromise with Moscow, the wording of the resolution, drafted by Australia, was changed to characterize the incident as the “downing” of the flight, instead of “shooting down,” according to the final draft obtained by Reuters. Diplomats said it was unclear if Russia would support the final version.
In Washington, Kerry criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and threatened “additional steps” against Moscow.
“Drunken separatists have been piling bodies into trucks and removing them from the site,” he said on NBC television yesterday. “What’s happening is really grotesque and it is contrary to everything President Putin and Russia said they would do.”
Moscow denies any involvement in the disaster and has blamed the Ukrainian military. While stopping short of direct blame on Moscow, Kerry put forward the most detailed U.S. accusations so far, based on the latest U.S. intelligence assessments.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond urged Moscow to ensure international investigators had access to the crash sites. “Russia risks becoming a pariah state if it does not behave properly,” he told Sky television.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had spoken “overnight” to Putin for the first time about the disaster, amid mounting horror over the treatment of victims’ remains. At least 27 Australian passengers were on the Malaysia Airlines flight.
Abbott said an Australian investigation team was in Kiev but had been unable to travel to the site. He said there had been some improvement with the Ukrainian government offering access.
“But there’s still a hell of a long way to go before anyone could be satisfied with the way that site is being treated,” Abbott said. “It’s more like a garden cleanup than a forensic investigation. This is completely unacceptable.”
After lying for two days in the summer heat, the bodies had been removed from much of the crash site yesterday, leaving only bloodstained military stretchers along the side of the road.
Emergency workers, who have to navigate reporting both to the authorities in Kiev and the rebels who control the crash site and other areas in the Donetsk region, will now need to pick through the debris spread across the Ukrainian steppe.
As Ukraine accused the rebels of hiding evidence relating to the loss of the airliner, a separatist leader said items thought to be the stricken jet’s “black boxes” were now in rebel hands.
Investigators from the U.N. aviation agency arrived in Ukraine to help probe the crash, but a senior official said safety concerns prevented them from reaching the crash site.
“Until safe passage for them is assured, we don’t send people into that kind of situation,” said the official with the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization.
U.S. CASE
Kerry said the United States had seen supplies moving into Ukraine from Russia in the last month, including a 150-vehicle convoy of armored personnel carriers, tanks and rocket launchers given to the separatists.
It had also intercepted conversations about the transfer to separatists of the Russian radar-guided SA-11 missile system, which it blames for the Boeing 777’s destruction. “It’s pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia,” Kerry said in an interview on CNN.