Mark MacKinnon from "The Globe and Mail" has been looking at the awkward situation Russian President Vladimir Putin finds himself in following the downing of MH17:
Mr. Putin is in a trap of his own making following the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. He’s unable – even if he were willing – to meet the West’s demands, in large part due to the anti-Western opinion in Russia he and his Kremlin have moulded over 15 years in power.
Having cast the West as Russia’s enemy for so long, and having personally vowed to protect ethnic Russians everywhere, analysts say Mr. Putin would be fiercely criticized at home if he pulled an about-face and abandoned the separatists of the Donetsk People’s Republic under pressure from Washington and London.
Much of the world sees the pro-Russian rebels as the villains of the MH17 saga. But they have been portrayed as heroes – standing up for their right to speak Russian and choose their own course – on Kremlin-run television for the past five months, making it almost impossible for Mr. Putin to desert them now.
“People are still supportive of the government, and they buy into this picture created by Russian TV of a fascist government in Kiev trying to destroy the population of the southeast [of Ukraine], of Novorossiya,” said Sergey Utkin, head of strategic assessment at the Moscow-based Russian Academy of Sciences. "It’s a myth that’s dear to Russian conservatives," he added, "and we have quite a lot of Russian conservatives these days – call them revanchists if you like."
Read the entire article here
Poll: 88% of Russians think Russian-speakers face danger in Ukraine. http://t.co/WuDVYc81x3
— Glenn Kates (@gkates) July 23, 2014
RFE/RL's multimedia department has just issued this somber footage of bodies from Flight MH17 arriving in the Netherlands:
Italian journo speaks to rebel who was told to look for Ukrainian plane his commander thought they'd shot; found MH17 http://t.co/3hTOghpciE
— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) July 23, 2014
Here is another update from our news desk on the arrival of MH17 bodies in Eindhoven:
Two military planes carrying 40 coffins bearing victims of the downed Malaysian airliner have landed in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven.
The planes were met on July 23 by some 1,000 relatives of the victims, Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and representatives of the other nations that lost citizens on the flight.
Flags of the 11 nations that lost citizens to the crash flew half-mast at the airport, and a minute's silence was observed in the Netherlands.
The bodies are to be transferred to a military base southeast of Amsterdam, where forensics experts will identify them.
Earlier at a ceremony at Kharkiv airport, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said the downing of the plane was an "inhumane terrorist act" carried out with help from Russia.
(AP, Reuters, AFP)
Our news desk has issued this item on a group of U.S. senators who have called for the Donetsk People's Republic to be labelled as a terrorist organization:
Less than one week after a Malaysian passenger plane was shot down over Ukraine, a group of influential U.S. senators has authored a letter to Barack Obama, urging the president to impose more severe sanctions on Russia and consider designating the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic as a "foreign terrorist organization."
Leading Democratic Party senators Dianne Feinstein, Robert Menendez, and Carl Levin wrote the letter to Obama yesterday.
The three senators pointed to what they said was "increasing evidence of their [DPR] human rights violations, including abductions and torture" which demonstrated that the pro-Russian separatist leaders in Donetsk "have threatened the lives of innocent Ukrainians, not to mention those unfortunate innocents merely traveling in civilian airspace over Ukraine."
The letter also called for the United States to impose "immediate broad sanctions against Russia's defense sector" and energy and financial industries.
@BBCDanielS Coming Home… pic.twitter.com/p1wRpIjoip
— Monic@ (@monicavanginkel) July 23, 2014
According to this German journalist, some footage from one of the crash sites of the Ukraine jets shot down today has now surfaced on the Internet:
VIDEO von Absturzstelle einer der beiden abgeschossenen SU-25… https://t.co/r18KweOgDV #Ukraine
— Dirk Emmerich (@DEmmerich) July 23, 2014
Rebels kidnap a @CNN fixer in Donetsk, @imi_media confirms. Anton Skiba is a freelance journalist & photographer pic.twitter.com/W9HHi9aFuW
— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) July 23, 2014