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Ukraine Accuses Insurgents of Blocking Access to Crash Site Ukraine Accuses Russia of Providing Missiles That Felled Malaysia Jet
(about 1 hour later)
KIEV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian government accused Russian-backed insurgents on Saturday of blocking recovery workers from the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down by a missile on Thursday, and of trying to destroy evidence surrounding the attack. KIEV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian government said on Saturday that it had proof that Russia had provided the surface-to-air missile system that shot down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over eastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing all 298 people aboard.
“The Russian-led terrorists are preventing access of the international community and foreign governments to the location where the Malaysia Airlines airplane crashed on July 17 and are obstructing the launch of an investigation,” the government’s statement said. It accused Russia and separatist rebels in the east of trying to cover up what it claled their role in the disaster by blocking recovery workers’ access to the crash site, removing evidence, and secreting transferring the missile launchers back to Russia just hours after the crash.
The government said that it had information that 38 bodies were taken to the morgue in Donetsk, a regional capital that is a rebel stronghold. At a news conference in Kiev, the capital, Vitaly Nayda, the head of counterintelligence of the Ukrainian State Security Service, displayed photographs that he said showed three BUK-M1 missile systems on the road to the Russian border. Two of the devices, missile launchers mounted on a self-propelled armored vehicle, crossed the border into Russia about 2 a.m. Friday, less than 10 hours after the jet, Flight 17, was blown apart in midair, he said. The third weapon crossed about 4 a.m.
On Friday, government officials had said they were planning to take the bodies of the 298 victims of the jetliner disaster to Kharkiv, a city that is under Ukrainian government control. They said a special laboratory would be deployed there to help identify remains and that the inquiry into the disaster, which is to involve experts from several countries, would also be based in Kharkiv. Mr. Nayda said that Ukrainian officials were certain that the missile had been fired from the town of Snizhne, in rebel-controlled territory. President Obama, citing United States intelligence, has also said that the missile was fired from rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine. Both the Ukrainians and the Americans have said they believe that the separatist rebels would have needed help from Russia to fire the antiaircraft missiles.
At a news conference in Kiev on Saturday, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national Defense and Security Council, said he could not provide information about the crash scene, because “terrorists” were blocking the government’s access. Tensions continued to flare on several fronts Saturday, with reports on Saturday of heavy fighting between rebels and government forces in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhanks, a reminder that the crash site is in what remains an active combat zone.
“At present we have limited information and limited ability to obtain formal information,” Mr. Lysenko said. “The people who are working from our side, they do not have the ability of free movement. They are under control of the terrorists. They are guarding the place. They are taking out all the evidence.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, announced that it was imposing economic sanctions on 12 Americans in retaliation for a new round of economic sanctions announced last week against Russian companies.
He added, “The terrorists, they collect everything in their hands.” The allegations of a cover-up, to hide the weaponry shortly after the missile strike and to prevent investigators from collecting evidence, threatened to further inflame an already highly charged international episode. The Kremlin has forcefully denied any role in the downing of Flight 17 and has said that the Ukrainian military’s anti-aircraft weapons may have been responsible.
The government’s allegations of obstruction underscored the difficulty of trying to carry out a recovery operation in what remains an active combat zone. Ukrainian officials, by contrast, leveled forceful accusations.
And even as officials in Kiev demanded free access to the crash site, there were reports of heavy fighting in the city of Luhansk, with at least five Ukrainian soldiers killed, according to the government. Ukrainian news services reporting explosions in the center of the city. “We have proof that the terrorist attack was planned and carried out with the involvement of representatives of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Nayda said. “We know that Russia is trying to hide its terrorist activity and their direct involvement.”
The Ukrainian government on Saturday also provided new details about the missile attack on the passenger jet, saying the rocket was fired from a BUK-M1 antiaircraft system in the town of Snizhne, about 12 miles from the Russian border. “The international community,” he added, “should ask Russian authorities, President Putin, how Russia will help in the investigation of this terrorist act, to us to interview the Russian military men who launched that missile.”
Vitaly Nayda, the head of counterintelligence for the Ukrainian State Security Service, said at a news conference that separatist rebels had been in possession of at least three BUK-M1 systems, and that after the Flight 17 disaster had taken them across the border into Russia . “We have identified the place from which they launched that missile,” Mr. Nayda said. “That area where they launched the missile was under control of terrorist organizations.” Russian officials have issued their own calls for a thorough international investigation, and demanded that Ukraine turn over all evidence for an independent inquiry. In a statement on Saturday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it “appeals to both sides of the Ukrainian conflict, urging them to do everything possible to enable access for international experts to the airplane crash area in order to take action necessary for the investigation.”
Officials were certain, he said, that the rebels knew they were aiming at a plane flying above 10,000 meters, or 32,800 feet. While this is in the range of a passenger jet’s normal cruising altitude, he also said that Ukrainian military aircraft sometimes fly that high. “There is no doubt that terrorists knew that they had launched a missile against a plane that was higher than 10,000 meters,” Mr. Nayda said, adding, “We know for sure that the terrorists have the plan to shoot down every military plane, every military plane, even cargo plane, every helicopter, in the air over Donetsk and Luhansk regions.” In Malaysia, where officials are grappling with the tragedy of losing a second major jetliner this year, the government has joined the call for a thorough investigation but has been far more cautious in assigning any blame, potentially complicating any effort by the United States to press Russia over its role.
Speaking in Kiev, the capital, Mr. Nayda presented photographs that he said showed the BUK-M1 systems in Donetsk, as well as on the road toward Russia. He said that at 2 a.m. on Friday -- less than 12 hours after the Malaysian jet fell from the skies -- two BUK-M1 systems were taken across the border into Russia and that a third was taken across the border at 4 a.m. along with a vehicle used to help operate the surface-to-air missile system. Experts and officials said two concerns shaped the Malaysia government’s wariness: its bruising experience with confusion after the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 more than four months ago, and a desire not to alienate Russia and China, its main partner in east Asia, unless absolutely necessary. The wariness continued even as Malaysian officials strongly denounced the lack of security at the crash site.
Mr. Nayda also showed a photograph of a white streak of smoke that he said officials believed was the trace of the missile fired at the passenger plane from the town of Snizhne. Adding to the outrage over the downing of Flight 17, the Ukrainian government accused the separatist rebels of blocking recovery workers from the wreckage scene, near the town of Grobova, and of trying to destroy evidence.
In its statement, the Ukrainian government said that it had informed its international partners about the obstruction of the recovery operation in the east, and that it was urging them to pressure Russia to help ease the obstacles. The government also said that rebels had moved at least 38 bodies of victims to a morgue in Donetsk, a regional capital and rebel stronghold. Ukraininan officials had planned to take victims to Kharkiv, a city in the east outside of rebel control, where they said a special laboratory would help identify remains.
“The Government officially states: the terrorists, with Russia’s support, are attempting to destroy the evidence of this international crime. We urge the international community to oblige Russia to withdraw its terrorists from Ukraine and to allow the Ukrainian and international experts to hold a comprehensive investigation of the tragedy,” the statement said. In Kiev, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council, said that officials believed rebels were blocking access in order to remove missile fragments that would prove that a Russian missile had destroyed the plane. He said officials from the state Emergency Services Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the general prosecutor’s office had been denied access, though uniformed regional emergency services workers were actively engaged in collecting bodies on Saturday.
Alexander Borodai, a Russian citizen who is a leader of the separatist movement, has denied that rebels were interfering with the recovery operation. On Saturday afternoon, at the scene of the crash, rescue workers in blue uniforms started to direct the collection of bodies from the fields where they fell, placing them on stretchers and into black body bags. A cluster of about 10 victims lay in the grass by the road, as men in pairs made their way through the grass to retrieve them.
A supervisor, Aleksei Sergeyevich, who would give only his first name and patronymic, , said that since 6 a.m., workers had gathered 190 bodies, some broken in pieces. He said the recovery area had been increased to 35 square kilometers from the initial 15-square kilometer zone, and that 343 workers were participating in the effort, including volunteers and rebels. Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who were denied access to the site on Friday, had been permitted to enter, a spokesman said.
The allegations from Kiev and overseas did not seem to change the minds of the many locals residents who blame the Ukrainian military for the crash, . A small group of locals who stood along the road near the crash site held signs, written in English, that read: “Stop the Ukrainian fascist army,” and “Stop the Genocide in Donbass.”
In Russia on Saturday, the Kremlin announced that President Vladimir V. Putin had spoken by telephone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about the crash investigation and the need to pursue a cease-fire in southeastern Ukraine.
The two leaders agreed to the need for a “thorough and objective investigation of all the circumstances of the incident,” according to a brief statement on the Kremlin website.