Conditions at crash site improved, says US

Welcoming news that most of the remains of those who perished in the Malaysian plane crash as well as the black boxes, are now in the hands of Dutch and Malaysian authorities, the US today said conditions at the crash site had improved.
"We welcome the news that most of the remains of those who perished in Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, as well as the black boxes, are now in the hands of Dutch and Malaysian authorities," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.
"While that is one step in the right direction, international investigators led by the Dutch still need immediate and full access to the site. Russia did say today that it will use its influence over the separatists to get them to fully cooperate. And we intend to hold the Russians to that," he said.

"We have seen conditions on the ground improve. That's illustrated by the fact that we have made progress. I don't think we've seen yet the level of cooperation with international investigators that we'd like to see to this point," he said.
"But time is of the essence here. It is the least that those separatists could do to cooperate with international investigators, give them the access that they need to that site so that they can conduct a transparent investigation and determine what exactly happened," he said.
Earnest said there has been a lot of evidence that's already been presented that paints a compelling picture.

"In some settings the Russians have acknowledged that they're actively supporting the rebels, the separatists in eastern Ukraine. In fact, some of the separatist leaders are actually of Russian citizenship. We've seen reports of heavy weapons moving across the Russian border into Ukraine.

"In fact, that was the reason for the sanctions regime that this administration announced last week, the continued evidence of heavy weapons moving from Russia into Ukraine.
"We've seen evidence that Russians are training separatists on how to use those weapons. Those weapons include anti-aircraft weapons. In fact, the separatists have bragged in the last several weeks of shooting down three aircraft.

"There is ample social media evidence to indicate that the separatists have access to the kind of the SA-11 missile system that is capable of reaching aircraft that are flying at high altitudes.
"Now, the other thing that we know is that the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was downed by a missile that was fired from the ground. That missile was fired from a separatist-controlled area. And at the time, the Ukrainian military was not operating anti-aircraft weapons in that area at that time," he said.