MH17Kerry: All evidence points to separatists; Russia should “step up”

U.S. secretary of state John Kerry said on Sunday that all the evidence related to the downing of Malaysian passenger plane clearly pointed to Ukrainian separatists as the culprits.

Kerry appeared on all five major Sunday talk shows to present the administration’s case against the separatists – and Russia — and to call on Russia to pressure the separatists to stop removing key pieces of evidence from the crash scene and stop blocking an investigation into the firing of a surface-to-air missile which brought down the jetliner.

“Russia has armed the separatists,” Kerry told ABC’s This Week. “Russia has supported the separatists. Russia has trained the separatists. Russia continues to refuse to call publicly for the separatists to engage in behavior that would lend itself to a resolution of this issue.

“And the fact is that only a few weeks ago, a convoy of 150 vehicles of artillery, armored personnel carriers, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, crossed over from Russia into this area and these items were all turned over to the separatists.”

Kerry noted that the management of the MH17 crash site was “grotesque” and Russia needed to intervene.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Kerry said: “We have enormous input about this that points fingers. It is pretty clear that this was a system from Russia, transferred to separatists. We know with confidence that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point of time.”

He said the United States had information that in the last month there had been a “major flow of arms and weapons from Russia to the eastern part of Ukraine and turned over to the separatists.”

Kerry said social-media reports and U.S. surveillance put the missile system in question in the vicinity of the crash ahead of the tragedy.

“We know because we observed it by imagery that at the moment of the shootdown we detected a launch from that area,” he said. “Our trajectory shows that it went to the aircraft.

“We also know to a certainty that social media immediately afterwards saw reports of separatists bragging about knocking down a plane and then the so-called defense minister of Donetsk, Igor Strelkov, posted a report bragging about the shootdown of a transport plane.”

The Guardian reports that the case against the separatists was further backed by evidence from voice intercepts and a video of a launcher moving back into Russia with at least one missing missile, said Kerry.

Kerry called on Russia to “step up publicly and join in the effort to make sure there is a full-fledged investigation”, and said he had spoken to Lavrov on Saturday. “It was a direct and tough conversation,” he said.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Kerry said management of the MH17 crash site was “grotesque.”

“What’s happening is really grotesque. And it is contrary to everything that president [Vladimir] Putin and Russia said that they would do,” Kerry said.

“There are reports of drunken separatist soldiers unceremoniously piling bodies into trucks, removing both bodies, as well as evidence, from the site.

“The separatists are in control. And 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.”

Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence, told CNN the type of equipment Russia had supplied to the separatists should only to go to someone with “an ethical compass. Now we find out it’s been given to separatists who are in many respects thugs. And it’s been used in a very terrible way.”

“The nexus between Russia and the separatists has been established very clearly,” Feinstein added. “So the issue is, where is [President Vladimir] Putin? I would say, ‘Putin you have to man up. You have to say this was a mistake,’ which I hope it was.”