[h=1]Obama hits reset button on wobbly public response to Malaysia Airlines shootdown[/h]

President Obama on Friday called the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 an “outrage of unspeakable proportions,” declared it a “wake-up call” for timid European leaders, and all but laid blame for the tragedy directly at the doorstep of Russian President Vladimir Putin.





Obama’s blunt language, delivered in the White House briefing room from behind a lectern with the presidential seal, offered a stark contrast to his muddled public handling of the disaster a day earlier.


As the news broke on Thursday, the White House signaled that the president had first learned about the world-shaking events from Putin at the tail end of a telephone call arranged at Moscow’s request. With grisly details coming in, Obama went ahead with a heavily partisan public schedule: A speech in Wilmington, Delaware, where he hit Republicans over infrastructure funding, followed by a brace of Democratic fundraisers in New York City.


Obama had begun his speech in Delaware with just seven sentences on the attack, declaring that “it looks like it may be a terrible tragedy” — a jarring response to media reports that were already citing a death toll of nearly 300 people. He did not tie the catastrophe to Russia.


And it was Vice President Joe Biden, not Obama, who first told Americans that the passenger jet had apparently been “shot down — not an accident, blown out of the sky.”


Republicans have recently stepped up their regular criticisms of Obama’s handling of world affairs — a reflection of escalating chaos from Iraq to Libya, as well as Syria's widening civil war, China’s increasingly tense relations with its neighbors, and the collapse of the Middle East peace process. His natural caution in the face of crisis has fed GOP charges that he is too slow to act or give voice to American outrage.


Come Friday, Obama revised his tone, shedding “may be a terrible tragedy” in favor of “outrage of unspeakable proportions,” personally confirmed that “a surface-to-air missile was fired, and that's what brought the jet down,” linked the attack directly back to pro-Moscow Ukrainian separatists, and implicated Russian President Vladimir Putin.


“A group of separatists can't shoot down military transport planes,” he said, “without sophisticated equipment and sophisticated training, and that is coming from Russia.”


Putin’s refusal to halt the flow of weapons and fighters into eastern Ukraine has emboldened the separatists and led them to snub talks with the government in Kiev, Obama charged.


Putin “has the most control over that situation, and so far, at least, he has not exercised it,” the president said.


Obama had a stern message about European leaders, who have resisted U.S. calls for strict economic sanctions on Russia for stirring up armed unrest in eastern
Ukraine, fearful that Moscow could shut off westward flows of oil and natural gas.


“This certainly will be a wake-up call for Europe and the world that there are consequences to an escalating conflict in eastern Ukraine, that it is not going to be localized, it is not going to be contained,” he said.


And the world learned from the president that at least one American, Quinn Lucas Schansman, was among the victims.


“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family for this terrible loss,” said Obama, who noted: “Because events are moving so quickly, I don't want to say with absolute certainty that there might not be additional Americans.”


White House aides had emphasized on Thursday that the president had taken charge behind the scenes. They disclosed his telephone calls to leaders of Ukraine, the Netherlands and Malaysia. They highlighted that he had spoken to Secretary of State John Kerry by telephone and had later consulted CIA Director John Brennan, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stephanie O’Sullivan, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, and deputy national security advisers Lisa Monaco and Ben Rhodes.


It was not clear to what extent Obama, who came to office vowing to “reset” relations with Russia, would change his cautious strategy when it comes to Ukraine. The president has fended off calls from Republicans to upgrade that country’s weaponry and assist its fight against the Russian-backed separatists. One administration official, who requested anonymity, suggested that the airliner tragedy highlighted the need for extreme caution when considering whether to provide advanced weaponry to forces not accustomed to using it.


Asked whether he would escalate the pressure on Moscow, Obama declared that “it's very important for us to make sure that we don't get out ahead of the facts” and noted that he had just announced fresh sanctions on Russian energy and financial firms on Wednesday.


“We had already ratcheted up sanctions against Russia,” he said. “We will continue to make clear that as Russia, you know, engages in efforts that are supporting the separatists, that we have a capacity to increase the costs that we impose on them, and we will do so.”


But Obama ruled out a greater role for the U.S. military.


There’s no way for the president to avoid partisan criticism in the current political climate. But he might take some comfort from the experience of former President
Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon who faced sharp words from fellow conservatives over his response to the Sept. 1, 1983, incident in which a Soviet fighter jet shot down a South Korean airliner with 269 people aboard — including a U.S. congressman — killing them all.


Reagan called that attack an “act of barbarism” and referred to it as the “Korean airline massacre.” He ordered Soviet airline Aeroflot’s U.S. operations to be shut down a week after the incident. His personal diary for Sept. 4, 1983, suggests that he took seriously a Republican senator’s suggestion that the United States retaliate against undercover Soviet operators.


“Strom Thurmond made a great suggestion,” Reagan wrote. “We know the whereabouts of many K.G.B. agents [redacted] were looking into the practicality of this [redacted] that would be shooting our selves in the foot.”


He also complained about sniping from his right flank.


"Short of going to war, what would they have us do?” he asked in a speech.


"I know that some of our critics have sounded off that somehow we haven't exacted enough vengeance," Reagan said. "Well, vengeance isn't the name of the game in this."


It wasn’t enough for some conservatives. “The administration is pathetic when it says this proves the President’s words have been right all along,” declared columnist George Will, referring to Reagan’s anti-Soviet rhetoric. “We didn’t elect a dictionary. We elected a president and it’s time for him to act.”

.

“Im really upset with George Will. He has become very bitter & personal in his attacks mainly because he doesn’t think Ive done or am doing enough about the Russians & the KAL007 Massacre,” he wrote, before giving Will what Reagan’s admirers in today’s Republican party might regard as the ultimate Reagan kiss-off.


“He also believes I should ask for increased taxes.”

 

[h=1]Why airlines didn't avoid risky Ukraine airspace[/h]
The shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines plane with nearly 300 people on board over war-torn eastern Ukraine is likely to have profound consequences for the world's airlines.





Airlines are already being more vigilant about avoiding trouble spots. That will make flights longer and more costly because of the need for extra fuel — an expense that will be passed on to passengers. They may be quicker to abandon routes near conflict areas.


In the aftermath of Thursday's disaster, carriers around the globe rerouted flights to avoid Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines announced that it will no longer fly over any portion of the country, routing flights over Turkey instead.


Some airlines had been circumventing the country for weeks after warnings from aviation authorities, and experts questioned Malaysia's decision to fly near the fighting.


"I find it pretty remarkable that a civil airline company — if this aircraft was on the flight plan — that they are flight-planning over an area like that," said Robert Francis, a former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.


The airline noted Friday that other carriers flew the same path in the days and weeks before — and even on the same day its plane was shot down. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lay insisted again Friday that the airline's path from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was an internationally approved route.

View gallery

A closed desk of Malaysian airlines is seen at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Thursday, July 17, 201 …

Violence in Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia rebels in the country's east erupted after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March. Earlier this week, the rebels claimed responsibility for hitting a Ukrainian military jet with a portable surface-to-air missile; the pilot was able to land safely. And the government charged that a military transport plane was shot down by a missile fired from Russian territory.


The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration had warned pilots in April not to fly over parts of Ukraine, and the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization told governments to warn their airlines. Thursday's crash, however, occurred outside those warning areas, prompting the FAA to expand its prohibition to eastern Ukraine.


Thomas Routh, an aviation attorney in Chicago, said it would be unusual for an airline to ignore such warnings, but he said there are many dangerous air corridors and airlines must decide whether a flight will be safe.


"There are airlines flying through Afghanistan airspace every day," Routh said.


Greg Raiff, an aviation consultant in New Hampshire, said that if airlines must avoid all the world's hot spots, flight times would be extended, requiring extra fuel and pilots. Some routes will become uneconomical, forcing airlines to abandon them, he said.

View gallery



Wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Shaktarsk, on July 18, 2014. US officials believe the …

Aviation experts said that many airlines continued to fly over Ukraine despite the warnings because it offered a shorter route that saved fuel. Malaysian officials denied that was their motive.
Joshua Marks, CEO of aviation-data firm masFlight, calculated that flying over Ukraine instead of around the country saved Malaysia Airlines up to $1,500 per flight in fuel, or 2 percent, and shaved about 10 minutes off the trip.


Ukraine closed the eastern region to air traffic below 26,000 feet on July 1 and extended the ban to 32,000 feet on Monday. An official with Eurocontrol, a consortium of European air traffic agencies, said about 350 planes had been flying over the area every day before the restrictions, but that had dropped by about one-fourth before Thursday's crash.


By Friday, snapshots from flight-tracking services showed dense traffic to the west of Ukraine, light traffic over western Russia, and very few planes over Ukraine.


Dubai-based Emirates airlines suspended flights to Kiev indefinitely. Germany's Lufthansa rerouted trips to avoid eastern Ukraine, although flights to Kiev and Odessa were unaffected. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines said that it would stop flying over any part of the country. India's aviation agency said Air India and Jet Airways would also avoid Ukraine.


Some airlines had already changed their routes.


Australia's Qantas stopped flying over Ukraine several months ago and shifted its London-Dubai route 645 kilometers (400 miles) to the south. A spokeswoman declined to explain the change. Korean Air said it rerouted cargo and passenger flights in early March as the situation in Crimea deteriorated.


Beyond Ukraine, Emirates recently stopped flying over parts of Syria as a civil war expanded. Some airlines have curtailed service in Iraq, where violence has escalated between the government and a jihadist militant group. The FAA has current warnings about flying over parts of Iran, Yemen, Egypt's Sinai peninsula, North Korea and other countries.


Last month, a gunman in Pakistan fired on a jetliner that was landing in Peshawar, part of the country's volatile northwest region, killing a passenger and wounding two other people. Emirates suspended flights to Peshawar, and other carriers canceled some flights while they reviewed airport security. Two weeks before that, gunmen attacked the country's busiest airport in Karachi.

 

Obama is crushing the Reagan link—and Putin knows it


Across his remarkably successful presidency, Ronald Reagan repeatedly made the link between the U.S. economy and U.S. international security and defense. He consistently argued that weakness at home leads to weakness abroad.



Jewel Samad | AFP | Getty Images


U.S. President Barack Obama, right, listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin after their bilateral meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico.


Reagan was aiming at the dismal Carter years. But he understood for all times that economic strength at home sends a powerful signal for international security overseas.


When Reagan went to Reykjavik to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev, he believed the resurgent American economy would hammer the nails on the coffin of Soviet communism. And he explained to Gorbachev that if the Soviets didn't come to the negotiating table with nuclear weapons, the U.S. would out-produce them on nukes and with technological superiority. Similarly, Reagan would not give up his vision for strategic missile defense.




And in both cases — building nukes and SDI — Reagan knew the American economy had the resources capable of achieving these goals, while the sinking Soviet economy couldn't match us.


In the end, the Soviet system imploded in one of the greatest reversals in world history. Freedom won. Communism lost.


Now, circumstances are somewhat different today. But the horrible Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine highlights some worrisome facts about American-Russian relations.

Mitt Romney was right. Russia is our biggest threat.




We know that the Malaysian plane was brought down by a ground-to-air missile fired from Russian-made SA-11 weapons run by pro-Russian Ukranian rebel terrorists.

We also know that Russia is fighting a proxy war with the U.S. in Ukraine, and that Russian special forces are leading the terrorist movement in Ukraine. We can add to this the proxy war fought by Russia in the Middle East, with its main ally Iran, and the fact that Russia is engaging in state-sponsored terrorism.


Whether President Obama understands all this, I don't know. His policies have been alternatively passive (Libya, Egypt), incoherent (Russian reset), and feckless (Syria). But the fact that the current U.S. economic recovery is the slowest in post-WWII history — spanning 70 years — is surely a key factor in Vladimir Putin's adventurism.


This brings us back to Reagan's link. Putin may recognize that Russia's economy is a thin deck of cards. But he surely doesn't fear the weak American economic position. Ditto for the broken economic dictatorships in North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela, and the rising economic dictatorship in China. They don't fear us.


In fact, America's economic weakness is so worrying, one suspects our friends are losing respect for us too. Whether in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Israel, our allies know that America has been the backstop for freedom. If not us, who?


But can they say that now?


As I testified this week before the congressional Joint Economic Committee, at 2.1 percent average real growth, the U.S. is lagging far behind the 4.1 percent average recovery pace of the post-war business cycles. The Reagan recovery averaged 5 percent annual growth at the same point as the Obama recovery.



<p>Kudlow: Growth half what it should be</p> <p>CNBC's Larry Kudlow addresses the Joint Economic Committee regarding the U.S. economy. Things are better, but the recovery is too slow, he says.</p>


Obama's stock market, from the depth of the meltdown, does beat Reagan's market and the post-war average for equities. But here's a very worrisome trend: Over the entire post-war period, average yearly growth has been 3.2 percent. And in the 1980s and '90s, growth was 3.7 percent. Since 2001, however, under Republican and Democratic presidents and congresses, as the dollar lost over a third of its value growth has dropped to only 1.8 percent annually. Something has clearly gone very wrong.


For payrolls, Obama's five-year recovery has averaged annual job growth of 1.2 percent (7.9 million jobs). Reagan's was 3.1 percent (14.6 million jobs). Even with the recent jobs improvement, record numbers of Americans have dropped out of the labor force, part-time employment is replacing full-time, wages are abnormally low, and middle-class real incomes are falling.


The massive federal spending stimulus of 2009-2010 did not work. There were no so-called fiscal multipliers. The Federal Reserve's near-$3.5 trillion of balance-sheet creation also failed, with money multipliers and velocity rates collapsing. Obamacare has thrown a wet blanket over business hiring, hours worked, and full-time jobs. Business investment and housing have not really recovered.


Over-regulation has stifled Main Street businesses and start-ups. The highest corporate tax rate among developed countries is forcing American businesses to flee to lower-tax nations, taking their cash and jobs with them. Tax hikes on personal income, capital gains, dividends, and payrolls are reducing growth incentives.


Ronald Reagan's free-enterprise growth model of easier taxes, limited government, lighter regulation, and sound money strengthened America both at home and abroad.

Barack Obama's model of heavy-handed government, income redistribution, punishing success, and cheap money has diminished us at home and weakened us around the world.


Caveat emptor, voters. It's truly time for change.

 

[h=1]This Is The Former Russian Military Officer Who Might Be Behind The Shooting Of MH17[/h]

Pro-Russian separatist commander Igor Strelkov leaves after a news conference in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, July 10, 2014.
A retired Russian military officer is suspected of being involved in the attack that downed a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.
Igor Girkin, who is also known by his pseudonym Igor Strelkov, has been called "one of the most powerful separatist figures in eastern Ukraine." He's a Russian citizen from Moscow and has declared himself the Minister of Defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), according to Radio Free Europe.
The Ukrainian government says Strelkov is a covert agent of Russia's GRU military intelligence. In documents posted on separatist websites he has asked Russia to provide military assistance to the DPR.
Strelkov is a veteran of both the Soviet and Russian armies, according to Reuters.
A Reuters article from May describes Strelkov as "the top Russian operative in the separatist east:"
He moves through the streets in a black Mercedes, his face with pencil moustache hidden behind tinted windows, and his aim is to "destroy" Ukrainian forces that venture onto his territory.
In a leaflet distributed in the rebel Donetsk region, "Colonel Igor Strelkov" assumed command of all rebel forces there and called for Russian army help to ward off what he calls the threat from the Kiev "junta" and from NATO.
Strelkov's history and his powerful position within the separatist movement in the east could be taken as proof that Russia is assisting or even coordinating the separatist uprising.
Russia denies this, but in a news conference on Friday, President Barack Obama said that the separatists "have received a steady flow of support from Russia," and Ukraine's government claims that Strelkov has been taking orders from Moscow.
Strelkov was reportedly present during the Russian annexation of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in March. He then moved to eastern Ukraine as the situation in that part of the country escalated.
Before he came to Ukraine, Strelkov was involved in conflicts in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, according to the BBC.
Russian media claims that he used to work for the Russian Federal Security Service within the Directorate for Combating International Terrorism.
But in April, the European Union put Strelkov on its sanctions list and described him as working for the GRU, according to Reuters.
Around the time the Malaysia Airlines plane went down, Strelkov posted a statement on Russia's largest social network that seemed to take responsibility for the attack. The post was later deleted, and it's now widely thought that the separatists mistook the Malaysia plane for a Ukrainian aircraft.
U.S. officials have said that pro-Russian separatists fired the fatal missile, but no group has claimed responsibility so far. Nearly 300 people died in the attack.

 

[h=1]Ukraine says Russia helping destroy crash evidence[/h]
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of helping separatist rebels destroy evidence at the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines plane shot down in rebel-held territory with 298 people onboard.
The government in Kiev said militiamen have removed 38 bodies from the crash site in eastern Ukraine and have taken them to the rebel-held city of Donetsk. It says the bodies were transported with the assistance of specialists with distinct Russian accents.
The rebels are also "seeking large transports to carry away plane fragments to Russia," the Ukrainian government said in a statement.
The plane flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with citizens from 13 nations was shot down Thursday afternoon in eastern Ukraine close to the Russian border in an area that has seen months of clashes between government troops and pro-Russia separatists.
Ukraine called on Moscow to insist that the pro-Russia rebels grant international experts the ability to conduct a thorough, impartial investigation into the downing of the plane — a demand that President Barack Obama also issued a day earlier from Washington.
"The integrity of the site has been compromised, and there are indications that vital evidence has not been preserved in place," Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said at a news conference Saturday in Kuala Lumpur.
He called for immediate access for Malaysia's team at the site to retrieve human remains.
An international delegation visited the crash site Friday evening but was only allowed to view one small portion. While the delegation was leaving under orders from armed rebel overseers, two Ukrainian members lingered to look at a fragment of the plane, prompting a militiaman to fire a warning shot in the air with his Kalashnikov.
Daniel Baer, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, complained that what he called "Russian proxies" in Ukraine had failed to give investigators safe access to the site and tampered with the evidence there.
Ukraine said it has passed along all information on developments relating to Thursday's downing to its European and U.S. partners
Obama, disclosing that one American was among those killed, called the downing of the plane "a global tragedy."
"An Asian airliner was destroyed in European skies filled with citizens from many countries, so there has to be a credible international investigation into what happened," he said.
At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. pointed blame at the separatists, saying Washington believes the jetliner carrying 298 people, including 80 children, likely was downed by an SA-11 missile and "we cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel."
Both the White House and the Kremlin have called for peace talks in the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-speaking separatists who seek closer ties to Moscow. Heavy fighting took place Friday less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the crash site, with 20 civilians reported killed.
Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, said Saturday it has no immediate plans to fly the relatives of the 298 passengers and crew killed in the downing to visit the site in Ukraine because of security concerns.
A spokesman for the airline says next of kin are being cared for in Amsterdam while a team from the carrier, including security officials, was in Ukraine assessing the situation Saturday.
In the Netherlands, travelers flying out of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport laid flowers and signed a condolence book before boarding their flights Saturday, including those on the latest Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to Kuala Lumpur.

 

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: Are rebels hiding the truth about the crash?


If those guarding an aircraft crash site are also accused of shooting the plane down, how does an international team get access to prove guilt – or innocence?


That's the essence of the international challenge in the wake of Thursday's downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.
In a phone conversation Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly agreed that international investigators should be allowed access to the crash site.

A German government statement said the two leaders "agreed that an international, independent commission under the direction of ICAO (UN's International Civil Aviation Organization) should quickly have access to the site of the accident... to shed light on the circumstances of the crash and move the victims."
Shortly thereafter the Russian foreign ministry released this statement: "The Russian side 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."
But does Russia really want the truth to come out and does it have sufficient influence over the rebels in eastern Ukraine to deliver? Reporters at the MH17 crash site Saturday say pro-Russian separatists are still keeping international investigators from doing their work.
Max Seddon, a reporter for Buzzfeed tweeted Saturday:
Basically, the OSCE are only allowed 30m further than they were yesterday. Grumpy won't let them onto the field where debris and bodies are.— max seddon (@maxseddon) July 19, 2014
And a couple hours later, Seddon tweeted:
A gunman named after one of the Seven Dwarves from Snow White blocking OSCE convoy. #MH17 investigation in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/lwaNjmGomY— max seddon (@maxseddon) July 19, 2014
At one point, a Reuters correspondent heard a senior rebel tell the OSCE delegation they could not approach the wreckage and would simply be informed in due course of an investigation conducted by the separatists. However, fighters later let them visit an area where one of the Boeing 777's two engines lay.
Without access to the site, the facts about what happened will remain murky. If the alleged perpetrators of the attack are the ones guarding the crash site and reportedly removing bodies and aircraft parts, an accurate accounting will be difficult to construct. Is that the Russian and separatists' plan?
"The terrorists, with the help of Russia, are trying to destroy evidence of international crimes," the Ukrainian government said in a statement. "The terrorists have taken 38 bodies to the morgue in Donetsk," it said.
Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai appealed to the moral obligation of those who have influence over the armed men guarding the crash site.

Interfering with the scene of the crash risks undermining the investigation itself. Any actions that prevent us from learning the truth about what happened to MH17 cannot be tolerated. Failure to stop such interference would be a betrayal of the lives that were lost.
Malaysia calls for all parties to protect the integrity of the crash site, and to allow the investigation to proceed. We urge all those involved to respect the families, and the nations who have lost their sons and daughters in this attack."
​

Reuters reported Saturday, that Ukraine's counter intelligence chief Vitaly Naida said he had "compelling evidence" that not only had the SA-11 Buk radar-guided missile system Kiev says was used to hit the airliner been brought over the border from Russia but the three-man crew was also comprised of Russian citizens. He said the unit had returned to Russia and demanded Moscow let Kiev question them.
Could the something constructive come out of this tragedy? Could the deaths of 298 innocents create pressure for Ukraine and Russia to reach a peaceful resolution to the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine?
Europe, under US pressure to increase sanctions on Russia (a close trading partner) certainly hopes this is the case.
"Moscow may have a last chance now to show that it really is seriously interested in a solution," Merkel's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "Now is the moment for everyone to stop and think to themselves what might happen if we don't stop the escalation."
Merkel asked Putin during their Saturday phone call to use his influence on the separatists to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine, according to the German government.
Steinmeier's remarks echo a similar line of reasoning laid out by President Obama Friday.
"This certainly will be a wake-up call for Europe and the world that there are consequences to an escalating conflict in eastern Ukraine; that it is not going to be localized, it is not going to be contained," Obama told reporters.
The Christian Science Monitor's Peter Grier wrote: The president’s remarks, as well as statements from Defense Department briefers at the Pentagon and Ambassador Samantha Power at the UN, seemed a coordinated effort to try and use the MH 17 disaster as a means to end the fighting in Ukraine’s disputed areas, at least for the moment. In essence the US may be trying to use guilt and the shock of innocent deaths to get Moscow to rethink its strategy of keeping eastern Ukraine on a slow boil."

 

[h=1]Russia says will impose visa bans on U.S. citizens in retaliation[/h]
MOSCOW, July 19 (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday Moscow would retaliate against the United States' most recent sanctions over Ukraine by denying entry to several U.S. citizens.


"Retaliatory measures definitely will be taken. First of all, a similar number of Americans will be prohibited from entering (Russia)," the ministry's spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was quoted in a statement as saying.


Lukashevich did not give names of those who would be denied entry.


This week U.S. President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on some of Russia's biggest firms for the first time, as well as four Russian government officials and prime minister of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic in Ukraine.


Lukashevich also said Moscow had extended a visa ban on U.S. Representative Jim Moran following U.S. sanctions earlier this month against Russian State Duma lower house of parliament member, Adam Delimkhanov.


"We have repeatedly stated that it is useless to talk to us in the language of sanctions. Such steps will not remain without consequences. When it comes to the visa restrictions, the reaction is usually mirrored," he said.


"As to economic restrictions they anyway have a boomerang effect and will inevitably do harm to American business focused on the Russian market."


The ministry also published the names of 12 Americans who had been added to the "stop-list" in response to the sanctioning by the United States of 12 Russians under the Magnitsky rule for human rights violations on May 20.


The list includes the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp's commander Rear Admiral Richard Butler.

 

[h=1]Russia says agrees with U.S. to use their influence to stop Ukraine hostilities[/h]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed on Saturday that both countries will use their influence on the two sides of the Ukraine conflict to end hostilities, Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The parties also agreed that all evidence from the downed Malaysian airplane, including flight recorders, should be made available for international investigation and that experts should be given access to work on the site.
"(They) agreed on the main - it is necessary to ensure an absolutely unbiased, independent and open international investigation of the Malaysian airliner crash in eastern Ukraine on July 17," the ministry said of the telephone call between Kerry and Lavrov.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) should play a leading role in the investigation, it said.
Kerry and Lavrov said that all sides should continue to work toward the goals outlined on April 17 in Geneva aimed at ending hostilities and launching a transparent settlement process involving all Ukrainian regions.
"Lavrov and Kerry have agreed to use the influence of Russia and the United States on the opposing Ukrainian sides in order to encourage them to move in that direction," the ministry said.
"It was stressed that the conflict in Ukraine has no military solution and can only be resolved peacefully through the elaboration of a national consensus," it said.
(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

 

[h=1]Ukraine, rebels argue over wreck, Europeans give Putin 'last chance'[/h]
HRABOVE/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukraine accused Russia and pro-Moscow rebels on Saturday of destroying evidence to cover up their guilt in the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner that has accelerated a showdown between the Kremlin and Western powers.


As militants kept international monitors away from wreckage and scores of bodies festered for a third day, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the rebels to cooperate and insisted that a U.N.-mandated investigation must not leap to conclusions. Moscow denies involvement and has pointed a finger at Kiev's military.


The Dutch government, whose citizens made up more than half the 298 aboard MH17 from Amsterdam, said it was "furious" at the manhandling of corpses strewn for miles over open country and asked Ukraine's president for help to bring "our people" home.


After U.S. President Barack Obama said the loss of the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight showed it was time to end the conflict, Germany called it Moscow's last chance to cooperate.


European powers seemed to swing behind Washington's belief Russia's separatist allies were to blame. That might speed new trade sanctions on Moscow, without waiting for definitive proof.




"He has one last chance to show he means to help," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said after a telephone call to Putin.


Britain, which lost 10 citizens, said Prime Minister David Cameron agreed with Rutte that the European Union, warier than Washington of hurting its own economy by imposing sanctions, should reconsider its approach due to evidence of rebel guilt. On Friday, Cameron had urged caution before an investigation.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most powerful figure in the EU, spoke to Putin on Saturday, urging his cooperation. Merkel's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper: "Moscow may have a last chance now to show that it really is seriously interested in a solution."


"Now is the moment for everyone to stop and think to themselves what might happen if we don't stop the escalation."


Germany, reliant like other EU states on Russian energy and more engaged in Russian trade than the United States, has been reluctant to escalate a confrontation with Moscow that has revived memories of the Cold War. But with military action not seen as an option, economic leverage is a vital instrument.






RUSSIAN RETALIATION


Russia said on Saturday it was retaliating against sanctions imposed by the United States last week, before the air disaster, by barring entry to unnamed Americans and warned of a "boomerang effect" on U.S. business. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry did agree in a phone call to try and get both sides in Ukraine to reach a consensus on peace.


Driving home its assertion that the Boeing 777 was hit by a Russian SA-11 radar-guided missile, Ukraine's Western-backed government said it had "compelling evidence" the battery was not just brought in from Russia but manned by three Russian citizens who had now taken the truck-mounted system back over the border.


The prime minister, denying Russian suggestions that Kiev's forces had fired a missile, said only a "very professional" crew could have brought down the speeding jetliner from 33,000 feet - not "drunken gorillas" among the ill-trained insurgents who want the Russian-speaking east to be annexed by Moscow.


Fighting flared in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. The government said it was pressing its offensive in the east.

View gallery

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (R) leaves after visiting bereaved families of passengers kille …



Observers from Europe's OSCE security agency visited part of the crash site near the village of Hrabove for a second day on Saturday and again found their access hampered by armed men from the forces of the self-declared People's Republic of Donetsk. An OSCE official said, however, they saw more than on Friday.


At one point, a Reuters correspondent heard a senior rebel tell the OSCE delegation they could not approach the wreckage and would simply be informed in due course of an investigation conducted by the separatists. However, fighters later let them visit an area where one of the airliner's two engines lay.


"The terrorists, with the help of Russia, are trying to destroy evidence of international crimes," the Ukrainian government said in a statement. "The terrorists have taken 38 bodies to the morgue in Donetsk," it said, accusing people with "strong Russian accents" of threatening to conduct autopsies.


Ukraine's prime minister said armed men barred government experts from collecting evidence.




RETRIEVING REMAINS





In the regional capital Donetsk, the prime minister of the separatist authorities told a news conference that Kiev was holding up the arrival of international experts whose mission to probe the cause - and potentially blame - for the disaster was authorized on Friday by the United Nations Security Council.


And contrary to earlier statements by the rebels, Alexander Borodai said they had not found the black box flight recorders. He said rebels were avoiding disturbing the area.


"There's a grandmother. A body landed right in her bed. She says 'please take this body away'. But we cannot tamper with the site," Borodai said. "Bodies of innocent people are lying out in the heat. We reserve the right, if the delay continues ... to begin the process of taking away the bodies. We ask the Russian Federation to help us with this problem and send their experts."


Midday temperatures are around 30 Celsius (85 Fahrenheit).


At Hrabove, one armed man from the separatist forces told Reuters that bodies had already been taken away in trucks. Another said that immediately after the crash people had looted valuables. But fighters and local people say they have been doing their best to collect evidence and preserve human remains.





As the stench of death began to pervade the area after Thursday's crash, correspondents watched rescue workers carry bodies across the fields and gather remains in black sacks.


Meeting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said: "We are already shocked by the news we got today of bodies being dragged around, of the site not being treated properly ... People are angry, furious."


The Ukrainian security council in Kiev said staff of the emergencies ministry had found 186 bodies and had checked some 18 sq.km (7 square miles) of the scattered 25-sq.km crash site. But the workers were not free to conduct a normal investigation.


"The fighters have let the Emergencies Ministry workers in there but they are not allowing them to take anything from the area," security council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. "The fighters are taking away all that has been found."


Malaysia, whose national airline has been battered by its second major disaster this year, said it was "inhumane" to bar access to the site around the village of Hrabove, near the city Donetsk, but said Russia was doing its "level best" to help.




A team of Malaysian experts flew in to Kiev on Saturday and experts from Interpol are due there on Sunday to help with the identification of victims. Dutch, U.S. and a host of other specialists are being lined up to help in the investigation.


Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said before flying to Kiev it would be "inhumane" not to have access and said Moscow was helping: "They are trying their level best to assist Malaysia to ensure we have a safe site," Liow said.


As tales of personal grief unfolded, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak revealed his own family was involved - his 83-year-old step-grandmother had been aboard the flight.


The United Nations said 80 children were aboard. The deadliest attack on a commercial airliner, follows the disappearance of flight MH370 in March with 239 passengers.


The company has defended its use of the route, 1,000 feet above the area close by Ukraine due to the hostilities. Some airlines had been avoiding the area, though many others were flying over. The issue has raised questions of liability for the deaths and damage and about international supervisors' roles.


The scale of the disaster could prove a turning point for international pressure to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, which has killed hundreds since pro-Western protests toppled the Moscow-backed president in Kiev in February and Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula a month later.

 

Putin Is A Pariah — He Must Now Be Treated As Such

For the past two decades, many around the world have been in denial. Russia was changing, they insisted. And so it has. It has embraced money, private jets and super yachts. For a fleeting few years in the early 1990s it toyed with democracy, only to conclude that this course was synonymous with chaos. Out of this new experiment of bling with brutishness came Vladimir Putin.
Six months into the crisis in Ukraine, the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner marks a defining moment in the West’s approach to Russia. Or at least it should.

Putin is a pariah. He must now be treated as such.


The terrible loss of MH17, with passengers from a dozen nations on board, was tragedy enough. The stories of Dutch families obliterated, scientific experts on their way to a conference in Australia, and Newcastle football fans making the extraordinary journey to New Zealand were heart-rending. Initially, as the facts remained a little unclear, the Russian President could, just could, have salvaged what remained of his international credibility in his response to the crash. He could have expressed his horror at the military escalation in eastern Ukraine, vowing that the perpetrators of the crime would be brought to justice. Then, in time, he might have called for a conference on the future of Russians in Ukraine and ensured that they secured greater autonomy. He would have been able to trade on some goodwill, alongside the power that comes with Russia’s dominance of energy supplies to Europe. Machiavelli would have approved.


Instead he reverted to thuggish type. As state television produced its now familiar diet of propaganda, the president insisted that the Ukrainians only had themselves to blame. Meanwhile, rebel leaders in the crash site area threatened journalists and investigators who tried to piece together the facts. The idea, from the very start of the Ukrainian insurgency, that the balaclava-clad forces in Crimea and the east of the country were a spontaneous reflection of local sentiment was laughable. They have been armed and coordinated from on high, from the Kremlin. Now the order has gone out to eliminate the incriminating evidence. This will be difficult, but Putin’s hope is to muddy the trail just enough that it will allow some European politicians to argue that further sanctions and other repercussions be toned down.


For sure, Putin did not want developments to unfold in the way they have done. The rebels had, shortly before the Malaysian airliner was downed, just boasted about their prowess in picking Ukrainian military planes from the sky. They ended up picking the wrong target. Their minders in Moscow will be furious with them, knowing that the events of the past 48 hours will set back the rebels’ cause.


In recent weeks, as the Ukrainian authorities had regained a few footholds in the East, the attention of the international media had moved elsewhere. Now it has refocused on the region. Movements of Russian military kit will be more closely monitored. Putin cannot afford another mistake. In the short-term at least, the rebels and their masters will have to watch their step.


Putin has no end game in Ukraine. He knows what he doesn’t want – a functioning, Western leaning, democratic state. He hated the idea that in May Ukraine conducted presidential elections, which contained clear choices and produced an undisputed outcome – at least in areas he couldn’t reach. His only purpose is to destabilise, as he has done in other former republics of the Soviet Union, whose demise he has publicly lamented. Nor does he have a grand plan for Russia, apart from restoring its “dignity”, after the “humiliations” of the 1990s.


Some of his resentments are justified. Russia was taken for granted in the early 2000s. The post-9/11 logistical support it provided for America’s war in Afghanistan, and its agreement not to hinder the war in Iraq were banked, with nothing given back in return. Putin could be forgiven for becoming wary of the West. Indeed, with power shifting to Asia and with emerging countries looking for points of reference beyond the United States, he could have developed a more subtle foreign policy that might have posed an interesting challenge. Instead he fell into a mind-set that was part Soviet era and part Latin American dictator of the 1970s.


His land grab in Crimea was hugely popular back home; his poll ratings reached an all-time high. Although it squealed, the West did not particularly object to the snatching back of a peninsula that had traditionally belonged to Russia and was ostentatiously handed over to Ukraine by a drunken Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 – at a time when demarcations between Soviet states were largely irrelevant anyway.


The crisis in eastern Ukraine is different. It will further damage Russia’s flat-lining economy and is costing lives. Families in the region are being torn asunder as they are forced to make choices about allegiances. Yet, miserabilist that he is, Putin will not call off the dogs of war, because that will look weak.


Back in Moscow, in the sushi bars and the five-star hotels, business goes on as usual. Russia has the veneer of a modern state. The wealthy are driven from plush office to suburban dacha in their tinted-windowed Mercedes, not quite impervious to events in Ukraine, but confident that it won’t affect them.


With each month, the United States has shown greater determination. Europe is divided. Some leaders want tougher action; others, mindful of their dependency on Russian gas, continue to hold back. President Obama is contemplating a further set of sanctions against named individuals and companies deemed to be close to Putin. For all the denials, the earlier rounds have hurt – a little.


The British government’s denunciation of Russian foreign policy and supine embrace of its money is hypocritical and self-defeating. Apart from one or two individuals who have stood up to the Kremlin – and usually ended up in jail – Russia’s billionaires have been his de facto ambassadors, providing glamour to Russia’s international image. They know which side of the fence they are on.


In September 1983 when the Soviets shot down a Korean passenger jet that had strayed into their air space, the Cold War was at its height and Russia was a closed country. Politically and militarily, the Kremlin may not have moved on, but economically the world is very different. Russia’s wealth is tied up in Western banks. Its companies are listed on global stock exchanges. Its oligarchs own prestigious properties in London, Courchevel and the Cote d’Azur. The country that helped them become rich is led by one of the most sinister politicians of the modern age.


This is both Putin’s strength and his weak spot. And this is where the West needs to act.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/puti...t-now-be-treated-as-such-2014-7#ixzz37yepzRMQ
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[h=1]U.S. Official Says Russia Gave Missiles to Separatists[/h]

A U.S. official confirmed to The Washington Post on Saturday that Russia supplied advanced missile launchers to separatist groups in Ukraine, and that those launchers were moved back across the border after the downing of Malaysia Air Flight 17. The Russian government has so far denied sending weapons to the rebel groups, and the rebels have denied possessing them, though they have boasted online about shooting down other aircraft.






According to the report by journalists Michael Birnbaum and Karen DeYoung, U.S. intelligence officials learned "a little more than a week ago" that Russia was attempting to move the weapon systems, known as the Buk-M1, into Ukraine. Several videos have surfaced over the last two days of the mobile launchers being moved on Ukrainian roads, including back toward the Russian border, though those videos were unconfirmed. This would appear to be the first direct accusation from American sources tying the disaster to the Russian government.


Although Ukraine has their own versions of the Russian-made Buk missiles, the government claims they did not leave any behind in separatist controlled-areas. If true, the missiles could likely have only come from the other side of the Russian border.


Earlier on Saturday, the Ukrainian government announced it had evidence directly tying the Russians to the crash. The head of Kiev's state security service, Vitaly Nayda, displayed pictures of Buk missiles being moved toward the Russian border.


Meanwhile, officials from several countries who lost citizens in the crash are growing increasingly frustrated with the inability to secure the crash site for a proper investigation, and to recover the bodies of the victims. Journalists on the scene report that armed separatists, some of whom were visibly drunk, denied foreign investigators access to the site on Saturday. There are also a number of reports that the bodies of some of the victims have been taken away to unknown locations, possibly to hide or destroy evidence. Those that remain are quickly decomposing in the heat and humidity, and much of their personal property has been looted.


Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is reportedly "furious" with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he had a tense and "personal" phone conversation on Saturday. "I told him 'time is running out for you to show the world that you have good intentions, that you will take responsibility,'" Rutte said. At least 193 of the 298 people on board the plane were from the Netherlands. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (who lost 28 of his own citizens) has essentially accused Russia of being complicit in the attack and threatened to withhold Putin's invitation to the G20 summit in November.

 

KERRY: 'Drunken' Separatists Are Piling Bodies At Ukraine Crash Site

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kerry-drunken-separatists-piling-mh17-bodies-ukraine#ixzz381WKPlI3

Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday slammed the "drunken" Ukrainian separatists who he said are moving the bodies from the Malaysian Airlines plane crash site. "Today we have reports of drunken separatists piling the remains in an unceremonious fashion and actually removing them from the location," Kerry said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"They are interfering with the evidence in the location. They have removed, we understand, some airplane parts," he added.

Ukraine is currently embroiled in an armed conflict with pro-Russian insurgents, whom the Ukrainian government has accused of firing an anti-aircraft missile at the Malaysian passenger plane on Thursday and bringing it down. U.S. officials have directly said the Russian government has supplied these types of arms to the separatists and Kerry said on Sunday that Russia needs to pressure the separatists into providing crash site access to international investigators.
"This is a very, very critical moment for Russia to step up publicly and join in the effort in order to make sure there is a full-fledged investigation ... so no one will have doubt. No fingers will be pointed about conspiracies, about ideology and politics governing this. We want the facts. And the fact that the separatists are controlling this ... even as the site is tampered with makes its own statement of culpability and responsibility," Kerry said.
Kerry also said he recently had a "tough" conversation with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, about the matter.
"It was a direct and tough conversation," he said. "We'll see if anything happens as a result of that."

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There isn't any need for an investigation.
It is common knowledge Russia arms one side and we arm the other side.
People would have to be fools not to know that.
Like I said in another post. Large countries have smaller countries do their dirty work for them. They arm and train them.
The U.S. is not any different. We do the same thing.

 

[h=1]Rebels say have 'items', believed to be black boxes, in Ukraine's Donetsk[/h]
DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - A leader of separatists said on Sunday they were keeping what they presumed to be the black boxes from the downed Malaysian airliner in the eastern city of Donetsk, but would need experts to confirm that they were the plane's flight recorders.





Ukrainian officials had feared that the black boxes, which when opened could offer an insight into the last moments of the flight, may be handed over to Russia or tampered with by the rebels who Kiev says are trying to destroy evidence of their, and Moscow's, involvement in the downing of the plane.


Moscow and the pro-Russian rebels deny playing any role in the disaster, which killed all 298 people on the plane.


"Some items, presumably the black boxes, were found, and they have been delivered to Donetsk and they are under our control," Aleksander Borodai, prime minister of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, told a news conference.


"There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes, but we brought to Donetsk some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner."


He said they would be handed over to international experts, when they arrived, and reiterated that the rebels did not have the technical capability to hit a plane flying at an altitude of more than 10,000 meters.


Another rebel official, Sergei Kavtaradze, said he thought there were two black boxes, which are painted bright orange despite their name.


Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said he could not comment, but that Kiev had long suspected that the boxes were in rebel hands.


Reuters first reported rescue workers finding a flight recorder on Friday, the second such device after rebels said on Thursday they had found one. The rebels later denied they had the black boxes.


Reuters video news filmed a rescue worker on Friday taking the flight recorder but did not immediately transmit the pictures due to difficulties in relaying film from a hostile area and the need to verify what the film depicted.

 

[h=1]Ukraine: Rebels have taken all plane crash bodies[/h]
HRABOVE, Ukraine (AP) — Separatist rebels have spirited away all 196 bodies that workers recovered from the Malaysia Airlines crash site to an unknown location, Ukraine's emergency services said Sunday.


Associated Press journalists saw the pro-Russia rebels putting bagged bodies onto trucks at the crash site Saturday in rebel-held eastern Ukraine and driving them away. On Sunday morning, AP journalists saw no bodies and no armed rebels at the crash site and emergency workers were searching the sprawling fields only for body parts.


Ukraine and the separatists accuse each other of firing a surface-to-air missile Thursday at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur some 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) above the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Both deny shooting down the plane. All those onboard the flight — 283 passengers and 15 crew — were killed.


Ukraine says Russia has been sending sophisticated arms to the rebels, which Moscow denies. The crash site is close to the Russian border.


Ukrainian Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Nataliya Bystro said recovery workers in the rebel-held territory had been laboring under duress and were forced to give the bodies to the armed gunmen.


"Where they took the bodies — we don't know," Bystro told The Associated Press on Sunday.



A spokeswoman for the international monitors at the crash site, Iryna Gudyma, later said some of the bodies had been loaded onto trains in the rebel-held town of Torez, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the crash site. Speaking Sunday from the crash site by phone, she said she did not know how many bodies were in Torez.


News reports of how the bodies had been decaying for days in the summer sun had ignited outrage worldwide, especially from the Netherlands, home to over half the victims.


Alexander Pilyushny, an emergency worker combing the crash site for body parts Sunday morning, told the AP it took the rebels several hours to take away the bodies on Saturday. He said he and other workers had no choice but to hand the bodies over to the rebels.


"They are armed and we are not," Pilyushny said. "The militiamen came, put the bodies onto the trucks and took them away somewhere."


Neither Bystro nor Pilyushny could explain what happened to the 102 bodies of plane victims that have not yet been recovered.


Earlier, the Ukraine government claimed it had reached a preliminary deal with the separatists to remove the bodies.


The U.S. has pointed blame at the separatists, saying Washington believes the jetliner was probably downed by an SA-11 missile from rebel-held territory and "we cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel."


An Associated Press journalist saw a Buk missile launcher in rebel-held territory close to the crash site Thursday just hours before the plane was brought down.


The latest U.S. intelligence assessment suggests that more than one missile system was given to the separatists by the Russians in the last week or so. But both Russia and the rebels vehemently deny any role in downing the plane.





In a blistering article for the Sunday Times, British Prime Minister David Cameron called the attack a "direct result of Russia destabilizing a sovereign state, violating its territorial integrity, backing thuggish militias and training and arming them."


"We must turn this moment of outrage into a moment of action," he wrote.


In a coded attack on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders who have blocked efforts to impose tougher sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin for Russia's actions in Ukraine, Cameron said Europe must now "respond robustly."


"For too long, there has been a reluctance on the part of too many European countries to face up to the implications of what is happening in eastern Ukraine," Cameron wrote.


Despite calls by world leaders for an independent, international investigation into the plane's downing, armed separatists limited observers' access to the crash site on Friday and Saturday.





"We have to be very careful," said Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the 24 international monitors. "We are unarmed civilians, so we are not in a position to argue with people with heavy arms."


The U.S. State Department described the rebels' refusal to give monitors a full access to the site "an affront to all those who lost loved ones and to the dignity the victims deserve."


Despite the restrictions seen by journalists and observers at the crash site, separatist leader Alexander Borodai insisted the rebels have not in any way interfered with the work of observers.


The Dutch led the way in outrage over how the victims' bodies were being treated.


"The news we got today of the bodies being dragged around, of the site not being treated properly, has really created a shock in the Netherlands," Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans told the Ukrainian president in Kiev on Saturday. "People are angry, are furious at what they hear."






Timmermans demanded that the culprits be found.
"Once we have the proof, we will not stop until the people are brought to justice," he said.
Putin and Merkel agreed Saturday in a phone call that an independent commission led by the International Civil Aviation Organization should be granted swift access to the crash site.

 

The World should now say GTFO to the Rushkies and stop backing these idiots.
Build up the weapons and if they don't nuke their arses.
We are doing with Putin what we did in the mid 30s with Hitler, appeasement

 

They are doing it for the same reason also.
What else can they do?

 

Absolutely.

 

[h=1]Kerry makes most explicit U.S. case against Russia over Malaysia jet downing[/h]
WASHINGTON, July 20 (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday laid out what he said was overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the downing of a Malaysian airliner in eastern Ukraine as he made the U.S. case against Moscow in the most emphatic and explicit terms yet.


Delivering his points in a blitz of U.S. morning news shows, Kerry demanded that Russia take responsibility for actions of allied separatists suspected of shooting down the passenger plane and he expressed disgust over the rebels' "grotesque" mishandling of victims' bodies at the crash site.


Kerry threatened further sanctions against Moscow and called on European allies, who have lagged behind Washington in imposing penalties over the Ukraine crisis, to take Thursday's plane downing as a "wake-up call" to get tougher with Russia. He also raised the prospect of increased assistance to Ukraine's embattled pro-Western government.


But despite the angry rhetoric, Kerry offered no specific new plans to force Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused by the West of trying to destabilize Ukraine, to back down.


President Barack Obama's Republican critics responded by accusing the administration of being too restrained and called for broader "sectoral" sanctions on Russia's energy and banking industries, something Washington has avoided so far because of the potential damage to the European and global economies.


Kerry's words added to a chorus of anger from Western powers over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which killed all 298 people on board, and the subsequent problems gaining access to the crash site in an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian rebels.[ID: nL4N0PV031]


While stopping short of placing direct blame on Moscow, Kerry put forth the most pointed and detailed U.S. accusations so far that Russia provided pro-Moscow insurgents with the sophisticated anti-aircraft systems used to down the plane.


He said the United States has seen major supplies moving into Ukraine from Russia in the last month, including a 150-vehicle convoy of armored personnel carriers, tanks and rocket launchers transferred to the separatists several weeks ago.


He also said the United States intercepted conversations about the transfer to separatists of the Russian SA-11 radar-guided SA11 missile system it blames for the plane downing.


U.S. authorities have seen a video of a missile launcher - with a least one rocket missing from its battery - moving back into Russia from a rebel-held area, Kerry said.


"There's (an) enormous amount of evidence, even more evidence that I just documented, that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these systems, training the people on them," Kerry said on CBS's "Face the Nation."


Moscow denies involvement and has accused the Ukrainian military in the shootdown.


A U.S. official familiar with Washington's assessments of the incident said Russia was believed to have decided to reinforce the rebels with more advanced weaponry because of concern that Ukrainian government forces had been making gains.




RUSSIA AND THE SEPARATISTS


The plane downing is widely seen a potential turning point in the Ukraine crisis that has taken relations between Russia and the West to a post-Cold War low. Kerry, who spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, by phone on Saturday, called on Moscow to publicly seek responsible action from the separatists, including access to the crash site.


"It is clear that Russia supports the separatists, supplies the separatists, encourages the separatists, trains the separatists. And Russia needs to step up and make a difference here," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.


He said foreign investigators have been given only limited access to the crash site. "Drunken separatists have been piling bodies into trucks and removing them from the site ... What's happening is really grotesque and it is contrary to everything President Putin and Russia said they would do."


U.S. officials have expressed hope that European anger over the plane downing would help unify the 28-member EU bloc, which stands to lose more by punishing Russia since it does 10 times more trade with Russia than the United States does.


Kerry challenged the Europeans to become assertive.


"It would help enormously if some countries in Europe that have been a little reluctant to move would now recognize this wakeup call and join the United States and President Obama in taking the lead, and also stepping up," he said.




ALL OPTIONS 'ON THE TABLE'


American lawmakers also called on Putin to take action, with Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein saying on CNN, "Putin, you have to man up."


Kerry's sharpened charges against Moscow suggest that Washington could move faster to expand its sanctions. But the consensus in Washington is the next phase, if it comes, will involve more surgical targeting of Russian oligarchs and others close to Putin, not sweeping curbs on entire sectors.


"The president is prepared to take additional steps," Kerry told Fox News. "We are discussing with the Ukrainians right now what they need, what else we can do." He said all options were "on the table" except sending in U.S. troops.


South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is traditionally hawkish on foreign policy, said on NBC that Washington should arm "Ukraine so they can defend themselves." Obama has been wary of doing this fear of escalating the conflict and creating a proxy war.

Here is a key question concerning the statement of Sec State Kerry: if he and the administration have 'much more evidence' then why not take it directly to the UN, and demand sanctions against Russia? Or for that matter just tell it?

 

[h=1]Emirates calls for airlines summit on 'outrageous' MH17 attack[/h]
PARIS (Reuters) - The head of one of the world's largest airlines has called for an international meeting of carriers to agree a response to the downing of a Malaysian airliner, including a potential rethink of the threats posed by regional conflicts.


Tim Clark, president of Dubai's Emirates, the world's largest international airline by number of passengers, also said domestic regulators worldwide may decide to be more involved in giving their carriers guidance on where it is safe to fly.


"The international airline community needs to respond as an entity, saying this is absolutely not acceptable and outrageous, and that it won't tolerate being targeted in internecine regional conflicts that have nothing to do with airlines," Clark told Reuters in a telephone interview.


He said the International Air Transport Association could call an international conference to see what changes need to made in the way the industry tackles regional instability.


The head of the Geneva-based group, which represents about 200 global airlines, said last week they depended on governments and air traffic agencies to advise which airspace is available.


But Clark - who described himself as "incandescent with rage" when he heard of the attack on the airliner and its almost 300 passengers - said IATA and a United Nations body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, could take action.


"If you go East to West or vice-versa between Europe and Asia, you are likely to run into areas of conflict," Clark said.


"We have traditionally been able to manage this. Tripoli and Kabul were attacked, Karachi was attacked and we have protocols and contingencies and procedures to deal with this," he said.


"That was up until three days ago. Now I think there will have to be new protocols and it will be up to ICAO and IATA and the aviation community to sort out what the protocols have to be."


He dismissed suggestions that airliners should be equipped with anti-missile devices, an idea previously aired when an Airbus A300 cargo plane was struck by a shoulder-launched missile after taking off from Baghdad in 2003.


"Some people say planes should be armed with counter devices. That will go absolutely nowhere. If we can't operate aircraft in a free and unencumbered manner without the threat of being taken down, then we shouldn't be operating at all."




MORE ADVISORIES


A spokesman for IATA was not immediately available for comment but industry sources said it was consulting airlines.


Founded in Havana in 1945, IATA began as a quasi-official body and helped to shape the modern aviation industry.


It has evolved into an industry lobbying group while maintaining a role in setting standards - including the urgent search for better tracking systems after the disappearance of another Malaysia Airlines jet, MH370, in March this year.


The U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization oversees aviation as one of the many diplomatic organizations born out of World War II, but has few direct policing powers and does not have the right to open or close national airspace.


"They can't (close airspace), but they can issue advisories and they may be a little more active," Clark said.

Additionally, he said, national regulators "may start getting involved a little more than they have. They have perhaps left airlines to their own devices".


He said he was not aware of any warnings from outside the industry about the escalating threat in Ukraine, which would change the way airlines think about ground-based conflicts and the risk of flying over some of the world's flashpoints.


"Yes, the airline industry was aware there was shooting at a low level and assumed these were low-grade surface-to-air weapons," he said.


"This was wrong as we now know. Nobody in their wildest dreams thought anybody could have done (such a) calculating act of mass murder."

Clark, who is viewed as one of the airline industry's most influential leaders, said the Ukraine disaster should not be allowed to eclipse or diminish efforts to find MH370, an identical Boeing 777 which disappeared with 239 people on board.


The disasters, and with them more than 500 deaths, have plunged the industry into intense introspection that is expected to lead to changes in the way passenger aircraft and the threats surrounding them are monitored and assessed.