The Observer: It’s time brutish Putin was held to account

The evidence is mounting. It suggests that pro-Russian separatists, using a sophisticated Buk missile, shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on Thursday, as it flew above eastern Ukraine. The rebels had boasted of having acquired the anti-aircraft system. Earlier last week they used it to shoot down a Ukrainian military transport plane. They initially believed they had downed another "fascist" jet. Instead, they mistakenly hit a civilian passenger aircraft, on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with 298 people on board.

This was, as Barack Obama put it, "an outrage of unspeakable proportions". The fields around the crash were scattered with wreckage and bodies. The victims were predominantly Dutch, Malaysian, and Australian, and from Indonesia, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines, Canada and New Zealand. Ten Britons are among the dead; one American. Eighty children perished. Fifteen cabin crew. This was a multi-national catastrophe. It has profound consequences for the world's relations with Russia.