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BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images
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It didn't have to be this hard. After days of negotiations, pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine holding victims' bodies and the flight recorder boxes from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 agreed Monday to hand them over to investigators.
While handing over the black boxes, separatist leader Alexander Borodai denied involvement in the crash, saying, "The Ukrainians had the technical capabilities and the motives to do it." On Monday, President Obama pushed for the separatists to end delays in recovering the 298 victims, and said Russia would "further isolate itself" if it didn't intervene. Russia's President Putin assured in a statement that the international experts would have secure access to the crash site. The bodies will be taken by train to a Ukrainian-held city where they will be given to the Netherlands.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible for "creating the conditions" that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement. The intelligence officials were cautious in their assessment, noting that while the Russians have been arming separatists in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia.
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Why is this man smiling? [see below] MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images
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Russia may have been involved in training and aiding these separatists, but the rebels are believed to have fired a surface-to-air missile on their own.
The assessment of the US intelligence community is that the separatists shot the plane down by accident. The targeting of the jet appears to have been by mistake, they said. The officials don't know who fired the missile or whether Russians were present at the launch.
AP | KEN DILANIAN |