An overwhelming majority of metropolitan Russians blame the Ukrainian military for MH17, a Levada poll shows. From our newsroom:
A public-opinion poll in Russia has found that the majority of residents in Russia's big cities believe that the Malaysian passenger plane that crashed in eastern Ukraine killing 298 people on July 17 had been shot down by the Ukrainian army.
The poll held in Russia's six largest cities was released on July 30 by the Levada Center.
Of 1,501 respondents, 46 percent said the aircraft had been brought down by a Ukrainian missile shot from the ground, while 36 percent said the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian military plane.
Only 3 percent of respondents said the airliner had been brought down by pro-Russian separatists.
The West says the pro-Russian separatists probably shot the plane down by mistake and accuses Russia of arming them. Moscow denies this.
AP quotes Ukrainian security spokesman accusing separatists of mining "the approaches to" the MH17 crash site. Another attempt by OSCE observers was nixed today:
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set out Wednesday in two vehicles — without frustrated crash investigators from the Netherlands who have been trying to reach the site for four days.
But the OSCE observers turned back to the city of Donetsk after discussions with rebels.
Safety concerns and hindrance from the separatists who control the area have kept the investigation team away. Foreign governments whose citizens died have complained the site is not secured and some human remains have not been recovered.
Government security spokesman Andriy Lysenko added to those concerns Wednesday by saying separatists "have mined the approaches to this area. This makes the work of the international experts impossible."
Lysenko was asked at a briefing about concerns that Ukrainian efforts to win back territory were increasing fighting in the area and slowing access. He said that Ukrainian troops weren't conducting operations against the separatist near the site, but were trying to cut off their supply lines to force them to leave the area.
In the wake of the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, widely attributed to Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, many magazines and newspapers around the world issued damning indictments against Russian President Putin, portraying him on their covers as a bloodthirsty fiend, a pariah, a liar, and a murderer.
'Pariah' Putin On Post-MH17 Cover Pages
UNIAN is quoting Ukrainian officials rejecting a report citing eyewitnesses as saying another military aircraft was shot down over Donetsk. The report suggests six or seven parachutes were claimed to have been visible after the plane was purportedly stuck.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko meeting yesterday in his Kyiv office with Ukrainian servicemen freed this week in Horlivka. They had been captured and jailed by pro-Russian militants. Their relatives were also at the presidential meeting.
