The United Nations Security Council is holding an emergency meeting to discuss the downing on July 18 of a Malaysia Airlines passenger airline in eastern Ukraine the previous evening, which resulted in the deaths of 298 people. Alleged evidence of Russian involvement in the incident, submitted by the Ukrainian government, is expected to be on the agenda of the summit.
Meanwhile,
the first meeting of a special Ukrainian government commission set up to
investigate the incident was held on July 18, according to the Foreign Ministry’s Consular
Service. The investigation is being conducted by Ukraine’s State Aviation
Service in conjunction with experts from Malaysia, the U.S. and the
Netherlands.
Spokesman for Ukraine’s Security
Council Andriy Lisenko said on July 18 that armed pro-Russian militants
continue to obstruct access to the crash site, hampering the efforts of the
investigative teams.
“The incident occurred on
territory temporarily under control of the terrorists, and they are preventing
access to investigative teams. While the territory remains under their control,
no thorough investigation can be conducted,” he said.
At a briefing in Kyiv, Lisenko said no Ukrainian fighter aircraft were in the airspace when flight MH17 crashed. The plane was outside the range of Ukrainian Armed Forces’ ground-based air defense systems, he added.
The Security Council spokesman was unable to comment on
reports that militants had removed and transported to Russia for inspection the
airliner’s “black box” flight-recording equipment.
THe Security
Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, has released what purport to be intercepted conversations between
Russian military commanders and rebel forces, in which insurgents can be heard
apparently celebrating the downing of another Ukrainian army plane before
realising it is in fact a civilian airliner.
SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko
made public the taped conversations at a press conference on July 18, calling
them “unconditional evidence” of Russian involvement in the tragic event.
Nalyvaichenko also warned of
the danger of “similar terrorist acts” spreading to other parts of Ukraine,
reporting that the SBU has thwarted an attempted attack on government buildings in Dnipropetrovsk.
A video of the
successful counter-operation has been made available on the SBU’s YouTube
account, he added.
The equipment from which the
airliner was shot down has been transported back to Russian territory, Nalyvaichenko
confirmed.
“The terrorists are trying to
hide their crimes by transporting back to Russia the Buk system with which the
plane was shot down. We must hold to account the Russian border guards guilty
of allowing these weapons to cross the border into Ukraine,” he said.
The Malaysia Airlines plane,
which was flying at a height of 10,100 meters, crashed at around 4.20p.m. some
3 kilometers northeast of the small coal-mining town of Grabovo in Ukraine’s
Donetsk oblast. None of the 298 people on board survived.
The bodies of 181 passengers have
been discovered, according to Director General for the Foreign
Ministry’s Consular Service Andriy Sybiga. All will be transported to
Kharkiv, where a special laboratory is being set up to identify the victims, Sybiga
said at a midday briefing in Kyiv.
Relatives of the dead arriving
in Ukraine will be provided with all necessary assistance, Sybiga added, and free-of-charge
accommodation will be made available in Kyiv and Kharkiv, with psychologists on
hand to offer further support.
Rebel forces deny
responsibility for the attack. In a statement reported by Interfax, first
deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Andriy
Purhin promised to ensure the safety of teams involved in investigating the
crash site.
“There is an
agreement. We will certainly ensure full safety locally, in this area. Although
so far a total truce is out of question. For now it is unlikely to be
possible,” Purhin told the news agency.
Commenting
on latest developments in the government’s anti-terrorist operation, Lisenko told
press in Kyiv that a new tactic by the rebels was being observed, which aims to
provoke Russian forces along the border by firing on Russian territory. The
Russian side’s retaliatory responses are invariably targeted at Ukrainian army positions,
he said.
He added that
the Ukrainian army had successfully surrounded the territory of eastern Ukraine
still controlled by rebel forces, but cordoning off all sections of the border
with Russia is currently not possible.
Lisenko further reported that
eight Russian aircraft were seen flying over the border area with Ukraine on
July 18. Ukrainian positions have been continuously under fire during the preceding
24 hours, and Luhansk airport has been heavily targeted in the wake of what
appears to be a fresh recruitment drive on the part of separatist forces, he
added.
“We have information that the
[Kremlin-backed insurgents] are recruiting volunteers in Moscow and other
Russian cities volunteers to join the fight in eastern Ukraine. They are
specifically appealing to those with nationalist beliefs. We also have reports
that terrorists in Luhansk and Donetsk are forcing local young men to join
their ranks,” Lisenko said.
The Malaysia Airlines crash is the third instance of a plane shot down in eastern Ukraine this week. Two aircraft belonging to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, an An-26 transport plane and a Su-25 fighter jet, were brought down allegedly from Russian territory in recent days.
In a statement published on
his website on July 18, President Petro Poroshenko called the Malaysia Airlines attack
an “act of international terrorism, directed against the entire world.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Matthew Luxmoore can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @mjluxmoore.
