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BREAKING- Reports that a Malaysian passenger airliner
with 295 people on board has crashed in Ukraine near the Russian
border.

The Boeing 777 plane was flying from Amsterdam to
Kuala Lumpur. More to follow.

A Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 295 people has crashed in east Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

There are no signs of survivors at the scene of the crash near the village of Grabovo, in rebel-held territory close to the border with Russia.

Both sides in Ukraine's civil conflict accused each other of shooting down the plane with a missile. It is still not clear why the plane came down.

It is the second disaster suffered by Malaysia Airlines this year.

Flight MH370 disappeared en route from Malaysia to China in April and still has not been found.

At a news conference at Schiphol airport, Malaysia Airlines' European chief Huib Gorter said they were still trying to identify some of the passengers from flight MH17.

He said of the passengers that have been identified there were:

154 Dutch nationals, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians
Six Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines and one Canadian
All 15 of the crew were Malaysian
Other airlines have announced they are now avoiding eastern Ukraine.

The crash site near Grabovo, 17 July
The crash site is in an area controlled by Ukraine's separatist rebels
The crash site in Ukraine, 17 July
Flight MH17 had been due to enter Russian airspace when contact was lost
Flight MH17 leaving Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, 17 July
Flight MH17 leaving Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, on Thursday afternoon
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Analysis: Jonathan Marcus, BBC News
If it does turn out that the Boeing 777 was shot down by the separatists - with weaponry supplied by Moscow - then it could significantly alter the terms of the whole debate surrounding the Ukraine crisis.

Over the past few days there has been growing concern among Western governments that Russia was stepping up its military support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Nato spokesmen insist that more and more heavy military equipment has moved from Russian stockpiles to the separatists across the border.

In response, the United States has strengthened its economic sanctions against Moscow - it is threatening even stronger action - though the European Union has so far failed to follow Washington's lead.

But if Russia in any way had a hand in this tragedy then the pressure - especially on the Europeans - for much tougher sanctions will only grow.

Game-changer in Ukraine crisis?

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Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko: Crash "an act of terrorism"
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke of his shock and said he was launching an immediate inquiry into the crash.

"This is a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia," he said.

US and Ukrainian officials said they believed the plane had been brought down by a missile.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said it was an "act of terrorism".

Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told the BBC he had intercepted phone conversations that proved the plane was shot down by pro-Russian separatists.

BBC map
But Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the Ukraine government for restarting military operations in the area, where it is trying to regain control from pro-Russian rebels.

"The country in whose airspace this happened bears responsibility for it," he said.

Separatist leader Alexander Borodai accused the Ukrainian government of downing the airliner.

Ukraine's defence ministry issued a statement saying there were no air force jets in the area and no surface-to-air systems being used against the rebels.

The British government has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the crisis in Ukraine as a result of the crash.

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US President Barack Obama: "The US will offer any assistance we can"
The plane fell between Krasni Luch in Luhansk region and Shakhtarsk in the neighbouring region of Donetsk.

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Aviation expert: "If this was a shoot down... it would have to have been a sophisticated air defence system"
At least 100 bodies have been found so far at the scene, an emergency services worker told Reuters news agency, with wreckage spread across an area of up to about 15km (nine miles) in diameter.

Broken pieces of the wings were marked with the blue and red paint of Malaysian Airlines.

"I was working in the field on my tractor when I heard the sound of a plane and then a bang and shots," a witness called Vladimir told Reuters.

"Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two. There was thick black smoke."

A separatist rebel from nearby Krasnyi Luch who gave his name as Sergei said: "From my balcony I saw a plane begin to descend from a great height and then heard two explosions."

The upper floor of Schiphol Airport is closed for media and reserved for family and relatives of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17, 17 July
The upper floor of Schiphol Airport is closed for media and reserved for family and relatives of flight MH17
A staff member sits behind a closed Malaysia Airlines desk at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, 18 July (local time)
A staff member sits behind a closed Malaysia Airlines desk at Kuala Lumpur International Airport
The head of the Russian Air Traffic Controllers' Union, Sergei Kovalyov, told BBC Russian that the airspace over eastern Ukraine had remained open during the conflict because the planes previously shot down had tended to be helicopters or low-flying fast jets.

"In order to bring down an airplane from an altitude of 10,000m, you need to have very serious weapons…. missiles," he said. "It's either a mistake or a terrorist act."

Ukraine has accused Russia's military of supplying advanced missiles to the rebels.

Earlier on Thursday, Ukrainian officials blamed the Russian air force for shooting down one of its ground attack jets on Wednesday, and a transport plane on Monday.

In 2001, Ukraine admitted its military was probably responsible for shooting down a Russian airliner that crashed into the Black Sea, killing all 78 people on board.

Lys wrote:I am inclined to hold Malaysian Airlines at fault for flying an airliner into a warzone,

PBS wrote:Charles Duelfer is an Iraq expert who spent more than 25 years in the national security agencies of the U.S. government. He studied the Korean Airlines flight 007 that was shot down in 1983 by a Soviet interceptor in the Sea of Japan.

RELATED LINKS

U.S. intelligence confirms MH17 was shot down

Duelfer has recently headed a small entrepreneurial space launch company. He is currently Chairman of Omnis, Inc.

We spoke to him this afternoon. His answers have been lightly edited for clarity. Watch for more from him on tonight’s PBS NewsHour.

How advanced is the technology needed to shoot down a Boeing 777 at 33,000 feet?

Well to do that takes a very serious and concerted effort. You have to be able to track the flight and the missile and track the flight for a few hours. It’s got to be a Buk missile system — this is a big air defense missile that can reach up to that level. That doesn’t suggest some random incursion. This type of weaponry is in a completely different class from more common missiles known as stingers or SA-16s — those only go up to 3-4,000 or maybe 5,000 feet. This is a big deal to do this. I haven’t seen that it was confirmed that it was shot down — the evidence points towards that, but it’s not confirmed. If it is confirmed that it was shot down then you have a lot of subsequent questions and this is when you would get into air defense in more detail. It would just seem impossible for someone to have just done a horrendously sloppy job at their work so instead you’re looking at someone who made a horrendous decision to do this. (Editor’s note: the U.S. confirmed after this interview took place that the plane was shot down.)

Who would have had access to this kind of defense system in the region?

Well, Ukraine and Russia would have those types of systems. Ukraine air defense from when they were a base for the Soviet Union would have that capability. These things will and should be knowable unlike the last Malaysian crash. These are heavily traveled air corridors. There are loads of NATO signal collectors in the region so there is going to be a lot of evidence about what happened. You will find out where and how this happened. How long that information takes is a question and who was in the decision chain that made it happen with be tough to figure out as well. If this plane was shot down it’s a huge deal.

Could Russia have given it to the rebels in Ukraine?

It wouldn’t make sense for them to do that. The Russian government could deny any responsibility by saying renegade commanders took over the equipment or they could say they were confused on who was operating and in control of the Ukrainian air defense equipment. But it wouldn’t make sense for them to send that to the pro-separatists.

It’s hard to work out how this would give either side an advantage. In the case of KAL007 in 1983, the Soviets thought they were shooting down a spy plane which looked a little like a 747.

How likely/possible is it that this was a mistake? Would it have been undeniable that this was a passenger plane or could it have been mistaken for a cargo flight?

It’s hard to imagine how this would have been a mistake. This is a standard flight route — if it deviated from the route that would bring up other questions, but from what I’ve seen it was on the right flight path. Though even if they were off the commercial route, the Russians are not going to be shooting an airliner. This is a different world now; it’s not the Cold War any more. They would be able to tell if it was a cargo flight. And the other thing is it was at full altitude, this was not a flight about to land or posing some kind of threat.

It’s really hard to figure out in whose interest this would be. It makes you think someone screwed up very badly.

I mean, this is a big air defense act, presumably whatever air defense system is responsible would also have the ability to watch flights in their air space. These commercial flights are so well tracked you know where they are at all times. You have these beacons that send out squawks with the identity of the plane and it would say that it’s a commercial air craft. These radars — and even the Russians have them — have an immediate identification system that will say friend or foe for each flight. They would have known it was a friendly flight.

How might this affect the ongoing Ukraine-Crimea-Russia conflict?

Well, you know, yesterday the president just announced more sanctions, and Russia said this is going to hurt you as well as us, this taking place in that context, well I’d be very cautious about drawing any links or causality, it’s already tense environment people are not going to be giving the other side the benefit of the doubt which will make an already tense situation worse.

There will obviously be statements out of the Pentagon and the White House, but watch for how immediately the Russians react and how forth coming they are — that will be a good tip off. If they don’t react for a while something is up, that would be my interpretation. If they say they are fully cooperative and will launch an active, immediate investigation into this accident and help Malaysians then that would be something else entirely. Looking around I have not seen them say much yet.

frigidmagi wrote:

Lys wrote:I am inclined to hold Malaysian Airlines at fault for flying an airliner into a warzone,

This is absurd.

General Havoc wrote:Given the circumstances above, such a thing should be impossible to do by mistake, but the situation in the Eastern Ukraine is indescribably chaotic from a military point of view, and so here we are.

Lys wrote:So is you not quoting the subsequent part of the sentence where I say that it was the rebel's responsibility to clearly announce air interdictions. If they didn't interdict the area above 30 000 feet, then well, they fucked up by shooting something flying above it. I would have declared an air interdiction zone extending to the upper range of my missiles, but clearly I'm not the one leading the rebels here.

As for my suggesting the Ukranians might have shot it down, I purposely opened and closed my post by stating it was most likely the Donbass did it. I was just speculating on the unlikely course of affairs and dwelling on the last time something like this happened in the area. The Ukrainian government also denied their involvement with the Tu-154 they shot down back in 2001 at first, admitting it only after the wreckage was recovered, but at least they had a plausible excuse in the airliner being well outside the S-200's range. They might have even genuinely believed it wasn't them at first. The Donbass doesn't have any of those excuses, so they're screwed.

Really, they should do what I say: Admit responsibility, apologize, promise it won't happen again, and throw whoever authorized the shot in jail for manslaughter. If that risks causing resentment within the ranks, they can always just let him out after the heat dies down, give him a pat in the back and say, "Good shot but next time hit the Ukranians." That way they solve both problems.

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that Russia had trained Ukrainian separatists in the operation of SA-11 antiaircraft missiles, the type of system that the United States said had been used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.

“We know for certain that the separatists have a proficiency that they’ve gained by training from Russians as to how to use these sophisticated SA-11 systems,” Mr. Kerry said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” “We know they have the system.”

Scheduled to appear on five network news programs on Sunday, Mr. Kerry laid out a litany of findings that point to Russian involvement in support of the separatists who most likely shot down the airliner on Thursday, killing all 298 on board.

American officials have said in recent days that the SA-11 unit was believed to have been transported to Ukraine from Russia shortly before the plane was downed. And the embassy in Kiev released a statement saying audio of separatist leaders discussing the downed airliner, released by Ukraine’s security service, was authentic.

But Mr. Kerry’s comments were the first time that an American official publicly asserted that the Russians had trained separatists in how to fire such a weapon.

American officials, who declined to be identified because they were discussing intelligence assessments, said on Sunday that a training area had been set up near the Russian town of Rostov, and that the instruction had involved the use of major weapons systems, including tanks and short-range rockets.

Mr. Kerry, in his multiple television interviews, underscored the need for a full and unbiased investigation, unimpeded by anyone on the ground.

On CNN, Mr. Kerry said the separatists had an SA-11 unit before the Malaysian jet crashed, but he stopped short of saying Russia had provided the specific missile unit that downed the airliner.

Asked whether he could speak of Russian “culpability,” Mr. Kerry said investigators would have to make such a legalistic determination. He left no doubt, however, that he thought Russia had enabled the separatists militarily, and he stressed that there had been an infusion of Russian arms to the rebels that included heavy weapons.

“There was a convoy several weeks ago, about 150 vehicles with armored personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, artillery, all of which crossed over from Russia into the eastern part of Ukraine and was turned over to the separatists,” he said.

On the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Kerry referred to a video that the Ukrainians have made public showing an SA-11 unit heading back to Russia after the downing of the plane with “a missing missile or so.”

“So there’s enormous amount of evidence, even more evidence than I just documented, that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these systems, training the people on them,” he said.

Separately, two leading members of Congress called for tougher, more concerted action against Russia.

“I think the nexus between Russia and the separatists has been established very clearly,” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Intelligence Committee, said on CNN. “So the issue is, where is Putin? And I would say, ‘Putin, you have to man up,' ” she said, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who she said should admit responsibility, even if indirect, for the air disaster.

Ms. Feinstein, a Democrat, added, “I think the world has to rise up and say, ‘We’ve had enough of this.’ I think Europe has to come together. I think Germany in particular has to lead. I think we have to continue with sanctions.”

Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, called the downing a “game changer,” adding, “I think Putin is responsible and complicit for what happened.”

Mr. McCaul, a Republican, said that while it was important for Europe to tighten its own sanctions, only the United States could bring decisive pressure against Russia.

frigidmagi wrote:I can agree with most of this, although I'll point out that when the US and the USSR both shot down airliners (also by mistake) the parties who ordered the missile launch were not jailed. The US commander of the ship was quitely packed off to retirement, I don't know what happened to the Soviet commander. At the very least though an admission of guilt and an apology should be forthcoming.