According to US services experts, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which departed yesterday from Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur, was actually shot down by a surface-to-air missile: who shot him, however, is still unclear. Meanwhile, the confirmed victims have risen to 298 (including an Italian-Dutch man) and reactions and accusations are being unleashed.
In fact, the rebound of accusations between Russia and Ukraine continues, after yesterday the Foreign Minister of Kiev had declared on Facebook that the missile had been launched by Russia or in any case by pro-Russian rebels in Ukrainian territory. Accusation rejected to the sender by Moscow, which, however, admits the link with the civil war that broke out in that area, through the words of Putin himself: "A crime that would not have occurred if there were peace".
The Russian president therefore accuses Ukraine ("Kiev is certainly responsible for this terrible tragedy") and has ordered his government to do everything possible to offer an objective picture of the disaster and "for a thorough investigation of the events".
Ma the secret services of Kiev (Sbu) would have intercepted some telephone conversations, immediately following the crash of the Malaysia Airlines plane, which would show that flight MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian separatists. “They shouldn't have flown up here! There is a war here,” the rebels allegedly told members of Russian intelligence. The call was allegedly made minutes after the crash from Chomukhine, a village 50 miles northwest of Donetsk. The British newspaper Mail writes it quoting the Kiev Post, to which the Ukrainian secret services allegedly filtered the news.
Meanwhile, Ukraine for its part immediately imposed a "no-fly zone" over the area (Eurocontrol, the European airspace manager, has meanwhile announced that it will reject "all flight plans that include routes" over the east of Ukraine) where military operations are underway and the United States, inviting the two countries involved to a ceasefire "to allow international investigators safe and unhindered access to the place where the plane crashed and to facilitate the recovery of the bodies". The same pro-Russian separatists have already declared their readiness to grant a bilateral truce for two to four days, to investigate the Malaysian Boeing shot down yesterday.
