Malaysia Airlines plane crashes on Ukraine-Russia border - live
David Cameron has warned Vladimir Putin that his "cronies" will face severe sanctions within days unless he opens up access to the MH17 crash site. All the latest details here
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• PM tells Putin his "cronies" will face severe sanctions
• Another 27 bodies are found
• Victims' bodies loaded onto trains
• Intercepted calls purport to implicate Russia in cover-up
• Malaysia Airlines crash: everything we know so far
• Watch: Wreckage offers glimpse into victims' lives
• Another 27 bodies are found
• Victims' bodies loaded onto trains
• Intercepted calls purport to implicate Russia in cover-up
• Malaysia Airlines crash: everything we know so far
• Watch: Wreckage offers glimpse into victims' lives
Latest
23.50 The AFP news agency are reporting that Russian PresidentVladimir Putin has promised Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte he will help retrieve bodies and black boxes from the Ukrainian rebel-held crash site of flight MH17.
Putin is said to have made the promise in his third conversation with Rutte since Thursday’s crash, the Dutch government press service RVD said, amid growing international anger over the stranded bodies.
“Besides allowing unrestricted access to the crash site, the conversation focused on practical matters, namely the departure of the train that has many bodies and the handing over of the black boxes,” a spokeswoman for RVD told the AFP news agency, asking not to be named.
“On both points Putin promised his full cooperation,” the spokesman said.
22.25 In his powerful dispatch from the crash scene, the Telegraph'sRoland Oliphant reports on how the bodies of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines plane disaster have now become objects of an international squabbling match:
When Roman showed up for work at the railway station in Torez as normal at 7am on Sunday morning, he was told to couple his diesel locomotive to a five-wagon train in the siding and shunt it to the platform outside the white-painted ticket office.
When Roman showed up for work at the railway station in Torez as normal at 7am on Sunday morning, he was told to couple his diesel locomotive to a five-wagon train in the siding and shunt it to the platform outside the white-painted ticket office.No one told him what was in the windowless grey wagon, or where he would be going next.
But these four windowless refrigerator wagons and one guard's van are now the grisly focus of an international tug of war over the MH17 disaster.
Roman's train is the makeshift morgue housing nearly 200 bodies collected from the crash-site of Malaysian airlines flight MH17.
What could be in the rebels' arsenal?
21.04 Western politicians and intelligence services believe the separatists used a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile to knock Flight MH17 out of the sky at 32,000 feet.
Tom Parfitt, the Telegraph's Moscow correspondent, says Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have been portrayed as a motley band of militiamen with ageing guns and mismatched uniforms.
So how did a ragtag guerrilla army get hold of such a sophisticated weapon, and what else does it have in its arsenal?
Military experts say the rebels began to build up their stocks in April when numerous armoured personnel carriers – or “battlefield taxis” – came into their possession. They seized some from overrun Ukrainian bases, while others were used to transport volunteer fighters from Russia into the conflict zone.
20.51 Tomorrow's cartoon from Adams, about the threat of sanctions on Putin and Russia, has just come through to Telegraph online
20.25 Investigators from the UN aviation agency cannot reach the site because of safety concerns, a senior agency source has said.
The Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is taking part in the effort to determine what happened to the airliner.
A senior ICAO official told Reuters that safety concerns meant the two investigators who were in Ukraine could not reach the crash site or examine the plane's flight recorders.
"Nobody has been allowed to have access to the site for that purpose," said the official, who was not authorised to speak to the media.
"Until safe passage for them is assured we don't send people into that kind of situation."
The official said the four-person team would be free from the political influence of the UN agency's 191 member states.
It is unusual for ICAO to take a direct role in an investigation, and the team's assignment comes in response to a request from Ukraine's government.
19.21 Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe is negotiating with separatists to bring the train containing bodies from the Malaysia Airlines disaster under Ukrainian government control.
"All efforts are focused on getting this train onto territory controlled by Ukrainian authorities," Rutte told a news conference.
He said a team of victim identification specialists was likely to enter the crash site on tomorrow, four days after the Boeing 777 went down.
A girl leaves a tribute at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam
19.16 Peter King, a Republican Congressmen and foreign affairs hawk, has called for Russia to be stripped of the 2018 World Cup.
Comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to a "Mafia goon," he told CBS's Face the Nation: "This is what a Mafia guy does, this is what a goon does, not a world leader, not someone in the civilised world.
"There can be no reasonable doubt now that Russia was involved, that Putin was involved.
"The US and our allies have to make clear to Putin that the rules of the game have changed, he's violated civilized norms...This is going back to the days of Stalin."
More details from Cameron and Putin phone call
18.48 Steven Swinford, the Telegraph's Senior Political Correspondent, reports:
David Cameron has warned Vladimir Putin that his "cronies" will face severe sanctions within days unless he opens up access to the MH17 crash site.
During a tense phone call, the Prime Minister told Mr Putin that he must stop supplying pro-Russian separatists with weapons and encourage them to stand down.
He voiced his personal frustration that Mr Putin has "ducked" calls for four days despite the death of 10 British citizens when the plane was shot down over Ukraine.
His comments came after he reached an agreement with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and François Hollande, the French President, for tougher sanctions on Russia.
The sanctions, which will be agreed by ministers at an EU summit on Tuesday, will target people and companies which have supported Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Cameron tells Putin crash victims deserve to have proper funerals
18:25 David Cameron has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and says he made it clear Putin must ensure access to the crash site so the victims can have proper funerals.
18:04 Sky News has apologised for going through luggage from the MH17 on air.
A Sky News spokeswoman said: "Today whilst presenting from the site of the MH17 air crash Colin Brazier reflected on the human tragedy of the event and showed audiences the content of one of the victims' bags. Colin immediately recognised that this was inappropriate and said so on air. Both Colin and Sky News apologise profusely for any offence caused."
17.36 In Roland Oliphant's video report for the Telegraph he says nobody seems to know where the bodies are heading to:
17.19 Emirates chief has called for international airlines conference to tackle security issues following MH17, including a potential rethink of the threats posed by regional conflicts.
Tim Clark, president of Dubai's Emirates - which is the world's largest international airline by number of passengers - said domestic regulators worldwide may decide to be more involved in giving their carriers guidance on where it is safe to fly.
"The international airline community needs to respond as an entity, saying this is absolutely not acceptable and outrageous, and that it won't tolerate being targeted in internecine regional conflicts that have nothing to do with airlines," Clark told Reuters in a telephone interview.
16.34 Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said this morning that Russia 'risks becoming a pariah state' over the MH17 plane crash
You can keep up to date with all the MH17 coverage from Telegraph World News on Twitter by following us @Telegraphworld
Rebel right-hand man was sacked as former undertaker for stealing
16:08 Alex Marunchak reports:
The right-hand man of rebel leader Igor Strelkov, widely believed to be the man behind the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet, is a former undertaker who was sacked from his job for stealing.
Igor Bezler
Igor Bezler, a field commander for the separatists in Gorlovka in eastern Ukraine, goes by the nom de guerre “Bes”, which means “devil” or “demon” in Russian.
It is Mr Bezler’s voice which Ukrainian authorities claim is on the recordings of an intercepted telephone conversation between heand a Russian army colonel about the destruction of Malaysian flight MH17.
'Man-up' Putin
15:48 Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to "man up" and admit Russia made a mistake.
She told CNN: "I think this has become a huge human drama, and I think the nexus between Russia and the separatists has been established very clearly, so the issue is where is Putin?
"I would say, 'Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say, if this is a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.
"I think the world has to rise up and say we've had enough of this.
"You cannot let this kind of thing happen, and Russia continues to prepare it for the next strike down of a civilian plane. There will be repercussions from this."
Another 27 bodies found
15:09 Twenty-seven more bodies have been found along with 20 fragments of bodies at the site, Ukrainian Deputy Prime MinisterVolodymyr Groysman has said.
He told a news conference that the bodies of 192 of the 298 people killed when the plane plunged into the steppe in eastern Ukraine on Thursday had been placed in refrigerated train wagons before being sent home for burial.
Flowers and momentos lie on wreckage at the crash site, near the settlement of Grabovo
15:01 Rosa Prince in New York reports on a marathon round of TV interviews, which saw John Kerry, US Secretary of State, appear on all five US Sunday morning political shows:
He said: "This is a moment of truth for Russia."
Accusing Moscow of providing military help to separatists he said were responsible for downing the plane, Mr Kerry claimed the investigation was now being hampered by “drunken separatist soldiers” who had taken bodies and airline parts from the crash site.
He told Fox News Sunday: “On Friday, the monitors and the people trying to get in there to secure the site were given 75 minutes. Yesterday they were given three hours.
“Anything that has been removed compromises the investigation. “We need full access. This is a moment of truth for Russia.”
Later, on NBC, Mr Kerry added: “What's happening is really grotesque.”
Asked if Russia and Mr Putin himself were culpable for the deaths of those on board the felled plane, he told this CNN the fact that the separatists were in control of the area where the debris was scattered "makes its own statement".
Saying that the US knew "with confidence" that the Ukraine did not have a weapon capable of downing a passenger jet in the vicinity, he went on: "It is pretty clear that is a system that was transferred from Russia in the hands of separatists."
In a rebuke to European nations which had failed to follow the US's lead in imposing deeper sanctions on Russia, he said he hoped they would now "step up."
"It would help enormously if some countries in Europe that have been a little reluctant to move would join this wake up call," Mr Kerry added.
'Cover-up'
14.39 Scroll down to our previous 12.55 update to watch our newly embedded video of a telephone intercept, which Ukraine's security service the SBU, says proves Russia is trying to get hold of the black boxes from MH17 in an attempt at a cover-up
14:35 US Secretary of State John Kerry has told CNN the missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow.
He said: "It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia in the hands of separatists." He said the scene at the MH17 crash site where he said rebels were hampering the investigation and the proper removal of bodies was "grotesque"
14.06 A still image from a video shows a rescue worker showing a flight data recorder to a colleague at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in Hrabove
13.41 Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine say they are willing to hand the black boxes over to international investigators.
Jet parts resembling the black boxes were discovered at the crash site," said Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
He said they would be handed over to "international experts if they arrive".
Borodai also said bodies which have been removed from the crash site will be kept in refrigerated carriages on a train near the scene "until the experts arrive".
The rebel said his teams had taken the corpses away from the crash site "out of respect for the families" and because "it is becoming inhumane in these conditions".
"We couldn't wait any longer because of the heat and also because there are many dogs and wild animals in the zone", he added.
13.31 Rebel leader in Ukraine: Black boxes have been found and will be given to international aviation authority
13.08 Ukraine rebels say they have material 'resembling' MH17 black boxes
12.55 Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, has uploaded a new telephone intercept which proves, it says, that Russia is trying to get hold of the black boxes from MH17 in an attempt at a cover-up.
The recording features Alexander Khodakovsky, leader of the Vostok (East) battalion of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, talking to men working at the crash site.
Reports today suggest the black boxes from the plane may already have been taken to rebel-held Donetsk.
Bodies of victims are placed in plastic sacks by the side of the road at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine
Bodies of victims are placed in plastic sacks by the side of the road at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine12.30 France has warned Russia there would be "consequences" if Moscow did not put pressure on pro-Kremlin separatists in Ukraine to allow rescuers and investigators unfettered access to the crash site of flight MH17.
"If Russia does not immediately take the necessary measures, consequences will be drawn by the European Union at the Foreign Affairs Council which takes place on Tuesday," the French presidency said in a statement after the leaders of France, Germany and Britain held a conference call.
11.49 Roland Oliphant reports:
At least some of the bodies appear to have been loaded on to a refrigerate train in the town of Torez, but it is still unclear where their final destination may be.
Five grey wagons - four refrigerated carriages and one generator and guards van - have been hooked up to a Soviet era diesel locomotive at Torez station.
At the time of writing the driver says he has been waiting for two to three hours for his next instructions.
"I came to work this morning like an ordinary day, and we were told to collect these wagons from the siding and bring them to the station. We've been waiting to be told to move off for three hours already."
He and his mate say they have not yet been told their destination.
Emergency workers load bodies of victims on a truck at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine
Emergency workers load bodies of victims on a truck at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine11.43 A pro-Russian rebel who calls himself "Novorossiya", or New Russia, has tweeted that the black boxes belonging to the downed Malaysian airliner had been brought to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
Sergei Kavtaradze, a senior official of the pro-Russian rebels' self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), declined to comment on the report, which was also carried on Russia's Interfax news agency.
Rebels have said that the prime minister of the DNR would give a news conference shortly.
11.24 Video of international monitors attempting to gather information from the MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine while rescuers began moving bodies, wrapped in black bags:
11.15 Reporters in the village of Torez, close to the MH17 crash scene, have found a series of refrigerated train carriages at the local station containing bodies of victims from the plane.
Max Seddon of BuzzFeed says the carriages were left unguarded after OSCE monitors had a brief look at them.
It is unclear where the bodies will be taken.
11.04 Samantha Power, US ambassador to UN tweeted:
10.51 In his second interview of the morning, Philip Hammond has stepped up the rhetoric against Russia.
He has said that it risks becoming a 'pariah state', adding that Moscow must hand back the black boxes from Flight MH17 if it has them.
His comments mark the first admission by a British minister that Russia may have obtained the black boxes from the flight.
An airline envelope lays in a sunflower field near the village of Rassipnoe after of the crash of MH17
An airline envelope lays in a sunflower field near the village of Rassipnoe after of the crash of MH1710.44 Tom Phillips reports from Kuala Lumpur:
There is growing bewilderment and anger in Malaysia today about what is happening with the bodies of victims. Family members of the dead say they cannot understand why it has still not been possible to get the deceased out from the crash site. "Something is stopping us from bringing back our loved ones and we are just trying to understand why," one man who lost his grandmother told me this afternoon.
"We just want to bring them back."
10.35 Ukraine says Russia continues to send "heavy weaponry" across the border to rebels.
"The Russian Federation is continuing to supply the separatists with heavy weaponry and other arms," Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's Security Council, told a news conference.
10.30 David Cameron has tweeted:
10.06 Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, has suggested that Russia could face new sanctions from within days unless it stops supporting the rebels.
He said that the "entire international community" is against Vladimir Putin, adding that Britain has reached the "unavoidable conclusion" that the missle which downed flight MH17 is from Russia.
Mr Hammond said he hopes that the "shock" of the deaths of nearly 300 people will spur other European nations into acting against Russia.
He added that British experts have concluded that there is still "useable forensic evidence" at the crash site but Mr Putin needs to open access to it.
09.22 A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian emergency services says separatist rebels have taken away all the 196 bodies that workers had recovered from the Malaysia Airlines plane crash site.
Journalists reported seeing rebels putting bagged bodies onto trucks and driving them away on Saturday. On Sunday, AP journalists saw no bodies at the crash site.
Ukrainian spokeswoman Nataliya Bystro said on Sunday that emergency workers have been working under duress and were forced to give the bodies to the armed rebels. She said the government has no idea where the bodies were taken to.
Alexander Hug, (2R) Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe's (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and members of his team wait to visit the site of the crash of Malaysia airliner MH17
Alexander Hug, (2R) Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe's (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and members of his team wait to visit the site of the crash of Malaysia airliner MH1709.10 The Associated Press news agency reports that Ukraine claims rebels have taken away all bodies from the plane crash site to an unknown location.
07.45 A rebel leader in Ukraine has this morning said that the pro-Russian fighters will guarantee the safety of international monitors at the Malaysian jet's crash site if Kiev agrees to a truce.
We declare that we will guarantee the safety of international experts on the scene as soon as Kiev concludes a ceasefire agreement," the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic's deputy premier Andrei Purgin said in a statement.
07.20 The Reuters news agency is this morning reporting that the UN Security Council is considering a draft resolution to condemn the “shooting down” of the plane, demand armed groups allow access to the crash site, and call on states in the region to cooperate with an international investigation.
Australia – which lost 28 citizens – circulated a draft text, seen by Reuters, to the 15-member Security Council late on Saturday and diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it could be put to a vote as early as Monday.
The draft resolution “demands that those responsible for this incident be held to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability.”
It “condemns in the strongest terms the shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ... resulting in the tragic loss of 298 lives” and “demands that all states and other actors in the region refrain from acts of violence directed against civilian aircraft.”
Russia’s UN mission declined to comment on the draft Security Council resolution.
07.10 Here is the full list of passengers who were on board the plane:
07.00 Good morning, and welcome to The Telegraph's live coverage of the latest developments in the Malaysia Airlines plane crash, on Sunday July 20.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10974050/Malaysia-Airlines-plane-crashes-on-Ukraine-Russia-border-live.html