Ukraine has launched an extraordinary attack on Vladimir Putin by publishing a horrific picture of a dead baby and accusing the Russian president of having the blood of the infant victim of flight MH17 on his hands.
Senior government advisor Anton Gerashchenko yesterday stepped up the rhetorical attack on the Kremlin by posting the picture with a message to Mr Putin saying: ‘This baby’s death is on your conscience’, before adding ‘Damn you for centuries!’
He said that he agonised over whether to publish the image of the tiny corpse lying in a ploughed field. MailOnline has chosen not to publish the photograph because it is too upsetting.
The escalating rhetoric fuelled fears that both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict are using the crash to further their own agendas rather than as an opportunity to make peace.
In the West there is increasing concern that a full investigation is already being hampered by the Kremlin and that Ukraine’s increasingly belligerent language will make it even more difficult to probe the missile attack which happened outside Donetsk on Thursday afternoon.
Vladimir Putin was earlier quoted as saying it is the fault of the Ukrainian government for failing to reach a compromise with the separatists. He said: ‘This tragedy wouldn’t have occurred if there had been peace on this land and hostilities hadn’t been renewed in Ukraine’s southeast.
‘And of course the government on whose territory this occurred is responsible for this terrible tragedy.’
But Mr Putin’s remarks have not been echoed in Western capitals, with most leaders showing barely-concealed fury at Russia’s aggression on its borders. Britain and the United States on Friday night laid the responsibility for the downing of the Malaysian passenger plane squarely at Russia’s door.
Just hours after the harrowing image of the infant corpse emerged, Barack Obama accused Russia of supplying arms to the separatist rebels which blasted flight MH17 out of the sky over Ukraine – killing on 298 passengers on board.
The U.S. president’s intervention came as Downing Street said that it appears ‘increasingly likely that MH-17 was shot down by a separatist missile’ fired from near Torez, an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
Earlier, David Cameron warned that those responsible for the missile attack would pay, as the number of Britons thought to have been killed increased to 10.
And in a dramatic ramping up of the rhetoric, the US ambassador to the United Nations even said that Russian troops may have fired the deadly Buk SA-11 missile.
Samantha Power said: ‘Because of the technical complexity of the SA-11 it is unlikely that the separatists could effectively operate the system without assistance from knowledgeable personnel. We cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel in operating this system.’
World leaders have called for a rapid investigation into the shooting down of the airliner, which could mark a pivotal moment in deteriorating relations between Russia and the West.
But monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were not able to secure enough access to the site when they arrived on Friday, the OSCE’s permanent council chairman said.
Rebels who met the OSCE observers and experts when they arrived on the site fired into the air in an act of defiance.
Thomas Greminger, the council chairman, said: ‘They did not have the kind of access that they expected. They did not have the freedom of movement that they need to do their job. The crash site is not sealed off…
‘In the current circumstances, they were not able to help securing this corridor that would allow access for those that would want to investigate.’
He said a team of OSCE monitors had stayed at the crash site for about 75 minutes and then set off back to Donetsk, but would try again on Saturday.
The report comes after Ukraine premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk said pro-Moscow rebels are preventing emergency workers reaching the scene of the air crash. His allegation raises the fear that vital evidence could be tampered with.
Throughout the day, rescue workers, police and even coal miners have been combing the site where a Malaysian Airlines jet crashed after being shot from the sky by a surface-to-air missile, scattering wreckage and bodies across the Ukrainian countryside.
Shocking new accounts of the carnage at the MH17 crash site have emerged, with eyewitnesses describing distressing scenes of naked bodies strewn across fields as well as countless possessions including children’s books and playing cards, slippers, letters and old vinyl records.
Yesterday it emerged that looters have descended on the distressing scene, stealing valuable goods from the 298 passengers and crew, who all died in the blast.
Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Kiev government, said: ‘I have received information that terrorist death-hunters were collecting not only cash and jewellery of the crashed Boeing dead passengers but also the credit cards of the victims.’
Later on Friday he published the image of the dead infant and said: ‘We don’t know this baby’s name or nationality – perhaps from Netherlands, Malaysia or the USA.’
Mr Gerashchenko said that ‘no-one would be able to imagine the horror this baby felt falling several kilometres’.
He added: ‘We can only hope that he or she was sleeping in the mother’s arms and didn’t wake up until dying from the crash.’
The image of the dead infant was published as it emerged that at least 80 children were among the 298 killed when a passenger jet was shot out of the sky at 32,000ft by a surface-to-air missile yesterday.
