with this story and more we'll be back after this short program. the stability. she said. you were. going to come up with. was laid out.

welcome back you're watching r t international with me in the harvey alongside me you know neal we are together because of our breaking story which we can bring up today with right now a malaysian airlines boeing seven seven seven has crashed in eastern ukraine all two hundred ninety passengers on board and fifteen crew members are at this point presumed to have died that's according to information from ukraine security services as well as a lot of eyewitness reports that we're getting from the ground now the plane as we know was on the route from amsterdam to kuala lumpur and was flying over the region of ukraine where keer has been carrying out its military crackdown on anti-government protests this jet apparently disappeared from ukrainian radar systems around fifty to sixty kilometers from the russian border the first locals

who arrived at the same reported dozens of bodies in the vicinity the crash site is said to spin spread over an area around a kilometer wide. and i can just ukrainian authorities they claim that the boeing was. presumably struck by a missile of some kind all parties involved denying any involvement in this crash. ok we were hoping to speak to a guest there but we've lost the connection so we'll try and get. patricia lancaster believe we're trying to get on the line back very shortly in the mean time you know just let's just recap between us i think what we know so far it is

a commercial flight two hundred ninety passengers fifteen crew members and from the pictures that we've seen of wreckage the eyewitness reports that we've had it looks like we're looking at presumably at this point total fatalities we should also add we have a correspondent there at the site francisco from our sister channel r.t. spanish is there and what he had to say it wasn't very bright at all he said there was complete wreckage it did not look in his opinion as if there had been any survivors of the two hundred ninety five people on board we've been seeing really heartbreaking images of passports ticket stubs etc on the ground plumes of smoke from that region but as it stands up at the moment whatever happened whether it was a missile which has not been clarified whether it was a technical fault which would be the second time this year from the malaysian

airlines plane it seems as if everybody on board has perished. ok let's get some analysis from now. joins us once again here. do you think there is any connection between this tragedy and the conflict in eastern ukraine we have been hearing conflicting reports it's very hard to know i understand but give us your thoughts please. well it wouldn't be the first time that a tragedy in a war zone is exploited for propaganda purposes obviously i would take anything that is said by the government to invalid a huge chunk of salt they have have a track record of. denying outright obvious observable truths like the bombing in donnie a skiff a few we go the day blamed an exploding air conditioner device that sort of thing i

mean the story about the snipers in my done things like that denial of atrocities against civilians that there routinely committing in the east. even in the fact that they're denying that their military operation in the southeast would disastrously wrong this week and that they lost almost the entire strike force that was trying to surround the rebel regions from the south. i would i'm not in the least surprised that they would claim that the russians or the rebels have shot the down this plane because that certainly. favors their propaganda narrative what comes to mind to me is an. incident from bosnia in one thousand nine hundred two which resulted in nato. establishing a no fly zone over the region when in italian aid plane was shot down and the bosnian serb forces were blamed for it is very quickly emerged and was buried that it was the croatian forces allied with the muslim government that shot the plane

down mistaking it for a serbian war plane and that that report was buried and it was never contested you know the mainstream story always stated you know the serbs had provoked this no fly zone and three years later the no fly zone was used by nato to intervene in the war itself and we've already heard stories of you of the government in kiev asking for nato involvement no state department spokesperson jen psaki was very curfuffle when commenting on the situation seeing quote we have seen reports everyone else has seen. is it is it surprising that she avoided any mention of the military operation in ukraine. actually the restraint is very telling because in the past the state department has made all sorts of claims that could not be corroborated or were outright false in their efforts to blame the russians and if they're being restrained now this leads me to believe that they know something that we don't and that they're being very careful not to blame the

russians because they might be afraid that the truth when it comes out would would fail to hold up those accusations saw the fact that the state department being very restrained about this suggests to me now obviously i don't have any proof i'm sitting here in washington is hearing the same uses you are but it suggests to me that this may not have been an act by the rebels order or you know even the russians as some wild accusations have been made but rather of the ukrainian forces loyal to the government in kiev which is being backed by the state department and obviously them being responsible for this would be a huge embarrassment in the bush or this is neal here in the studio as well i just wanted to know because we do not know this point whether this plane was shot down so we are we are making conjecture but it's a an obvious kind of thought to go down that line of thought because of what's been happening we do know there was

a lot of sensitivity of planes in the region recently probably a lot of suspicion and sensitivity of any flights coming over if it was proven either side with responsible for this huge loss of life or this tragedy what would the implications be presumably there would be huge for either side depending on who was responsible. of course which is why. he has issued a statement blaming the rebels i believe i've heard that a few weeks ago do you create an air traffic control has actually restricted airspace over these areas due to military operations so the question then arises why the malaysian airliner was traveling through the area that was obviously under an introduction order. there's been multiple cases of ukrainian airplanes attacking civilians in attacking rebel positions and in some instances those low flying ground attack planes have been shot down by the rebels using shoulder launched missiles the manpads but there's no indication there's never been any indication

that the rebels possess the technology to actually shoot down high flying jets and this airliner would have been flying at a pretty high altitude if it was at cruising speed so again. the it's possible it's puppets very possible that this was a mechanical failure and we don't know what happened to flight three seventy the one that disappeared a few months ago i mean that's that's another mistreat and certainly but that the coincidence would just be overwhelming i mean what are the odds obviously to the scenario in which the airliner was shot shot down is far more likely and again than we have a precedent of the ukrainians shooting down a russian airliner in two thousand and one and eventually admitting oh it was a naval exercise and we shot the missile by mistake i don't know but i mean it stats wouldn't you know and that's what ended up being established later and there were the obvious you know consequences at that point in time because diplomats who work behind the scenes to papered over. cold comfort to the victims but that's for

that's what happened this incident is not going to go that way there's there's too much at stake the tensions are very very high we've got the kiev losing the war that it cannot afford to lose we've got its backers in the us who just. announced new sanctions against russia for no reason whatsoever. and with this incident is just threatening to escalate the situation beyond all predictions and i simply don't believe it's a coincidence. version a normally in circumstances like this where a plane goes down and so many lives are lost you wouldn't expect the investigation and all the facts come to the surface of course this is so much more complicated as you just said the political importance of any investigation and the findings will be so significant to world opinion do you think we can even get an independent investigation in what is effectively a war zone. well even if we can put together

a team of investigators that will not be influenced politically and i'm honestly very skeptical of that possibility how are they going to get there and how are they how is their security going to be guaranteed with you know the who to army conducting punitive operations and the rebels fighting on for dear life and ukrainian barbers attacking villages and the artillery i mean how are they going to operate in this war zone and how can they possibly avoid seem contamination there's just no way of investigating this properly the best evidence would really be the radar signatures and any sort of sighting of a missile. on the radar screens but then again that the evidence might be manipulated by the parties involved so it's just very very difficult to get a proper investigation. of this tragedy in the first place. just another question as well for you just about the malaysia airlines because of course they're in the headlines for the second time this year. must be devastating

for them in so many different ways what does this mean now for the airlines future would you say. certainly. i've we've seen airline stead of folded due to tragedies that were. not necessarily their fault t.w.a. went out of business after flight eight hundred mysteriously exploded above long island back in ninety six. we had value jet shut down after the crash in florida. there are precedents for major carriers simply shutting down after people lost confidence in them between this now again if this was indeed a missile that shut down the airliner it's obviously not the airline's fault unless they consciously decided to violate the interdiction of the ukrainian airspace and fly through there anyway which would be human error obviously and there would be

responsibility on the airline at least partial. between this and the disappearance of that plane a few months ago that is still not explained yeah i wouldn't fly malaysian if if i were given a choice that's for sure. ok thanks so much for giving israel perspective on this. speaking to thank you so much. as we have been hearing in the hours since this happened we've been hearing from. eyewitnesses we've already heard from from to the locals we believe. who is on the scene i believe can join us live thanks for speaking to us what's happening where you are there off the crash scene on the border. right now with. three or four kilometers of the crash scene and we are being held up by the

at the checkpoints. the soldiers here have informed us that there are bodies scattered all around the area. to soldiers here tell us that they believed that it was a military plane but they are not clear it doesn't seem like they have actually have a lot of information on the issue they're probably just speculating. but right now we are trying to work our way closer to the scene itself and. try to get more information we do appreciate that are there is a lot of speculation of course but at what our local saying i'm sure you've been discussing it trying to get your head around what occurred is anybody mentioning the plane being shall dine or a technical fault what's what are you hearing on the ground there. that. definitely shot down really been confirmed that by the soldiers

here. beyond that i can't really tell you but. they again they say there are bodies scattered throughout the area and right now they're waiting on the prime minister of good our next people's republic to come and experience inspect the area. wow ok there is news just reaching us as well the reports coming in from a source we believe and russian aviation industry claiming that the russian president's plane may have been the target of the attack now it's claimed putin's jet crossed paths at the exact same height as the doomed boeing just forty minutes later this is brand new information coming into us here at r t international the planes were said to share a similar form on as we mentioned earlier color as well i red white and blue if

you're still there at puff trick if you can hear it and what i've just mentioned there was anything like that being spoken about it may have been shot down because it was the russian president's plane. i have not heard any information here on the spot that i can neither confirm nor have any and i have no confirmation either way on that issue ok that's no problem but just we want to keep a little bit longer because it's good to be off the site giving us you know really a taste of what what is happening with this tragedy africans have the emergency services are right are you seeing a lot of action where you are not. allowed to emergency. into the area we actually followed them for. twenty twenty five kilometers and they were allowed past. checkpoints. it seems like

they were here to pick up the bodies. ok patrick lang custer live from the scene of what looks like a killer some three hundred people thank you for speaking to us. just to go showing. i mean at times sometimes you kind of left speechless with stories and in particular tragedies the suggestion we're getting now the suggestion that supposedly and we don't yet know this was an attack on this plane that it was possibly linked to the russian president's plane flying by what within forty minutes in terms of pressure to be close to the same space. while i mean this is just on to it entirely and politically if there's even any hint of actually having some tree the political ramifications of this is almost

beyond comprehension so we're going to be very careful with off fact checking here but that is just taken on an unbelievable dimension and let's just remind what we are speaking about because it is news just coming into this that there are reports coming in from a source in the russian aviation industry that claims that the russian president's plane may have been the target of the attack it's claimed putin's jet cross paths at the exact same height as the doomed boeing just forty minutes after what occurred now the planes were said to share a similar form color. let's try and get some some analysis of what we're hearing because it is it is quite hard just to you know to get a good feeling what's going on here i believe we have a guest standing by charlton munching director of aviation advocacy let's just let's just talk about the breaking news we're hearing now that this may have been

at a target the russian president's jet may have been the target what is your thoughts on the. very highest of the order it seems incredible to me and i really think we should go on until we've got something much more substantiated to beat you up on one of the points you made a few minutes ago we know the ocean forty minutes is actually quite a long time you could expect to move. the separation only metiria of the world at about five hundred. euro primes when was there. i'm also not quite sure why the russian president's there are. quite. se but who knows unless as you say we know nothing we are at risk of speculating about the speculation on which we speculate and i think we need to stop. one of the things of course the investigation is going to center and it is getting this black box that will you know it will tell

a tale of what occurred how long will it take to figure out what occurred after this is fine and well assuming we can get the black box which. is normally to say such a low unfortunately has a big nose in the previous lives it has to be and the shooting it survived the explosion whatever caused it and obviously the contact with the ground what it will tell us is either that nothing was going wrong on your opponent in which case the speculation that it was shot down become significant we hire or sorry or beat with the white or you are that we shut down become significant or it will indicate that there were mechanical issues mechanical pulse whatever which of course runs exactly in the opposite direction but until we know what's in the black box really we don't know any and as you're quite right earlier to say we simply don't shut down or not that. it has to be said that that cruise is the point at which is least likely to have any sort of incident so it's

a most unusual situation the aircraft i understand the aircraft was at thirty three thousand which is ten thousand. they does above the ground which is absolutely a cruise that would have been traveling alone in a very very normal system and if something had gone wrong it either went wrong and stored merrily rapidly because there were clearly no signals coming out of the air . to explain the mechanical issues or there was a very rapid external intervention in other words. it takes really quite remarkable is it just to kind of hit an airplane and at thirty three thousand is possible to. at that height and moving at that stage it'll be moving at about nine hundred kilometers an hour it is actually quite difficult to tell whether it's a military aircraft or civil aircraft or civilian aircraft it's very difficult to see what its colors would look like and certainly possible so that's markings but it's really quite complicated equipment to bring it down at that high i should say

i have a flying conflict zines for a very long time it's hard to avoid a conflict zones away now watching if you're looking on the twitter if they. are rushing in to say for now one why not apply the syria but my failings in the world had made the decision that it was at that height of them safe operation. yeah and you know you've already said it's not easy to bring down a plane at that altitude we don't know if there was any kind of weaponry involved but at the same time as we understand the crew didn't inform ground control of any potential threat or problem how unusual is that that is a significant that is a significant effect that that is that one i really doubt a point but a significant one normally normally and obviously this was a normal body evolution normally if the if something goes wrong with the the the cockpit has time enough to try to work out what is happening the golden rule that

said the golden rule in aviation is you aviate navigate communicate neither would you make sure why they're working out where you're going and then you talk to the ground so the moment something goes wrong first in the pilot does it work out what it is that the first thing the current doesn't use is talk to the ground nevertheless normally you've got sufficient time to try to work out what's happening try to stabilize the a ground and start to the ground about what's going on the other thing that of course will happen is that malaysian airlines will probably be getting information about its engine during the course of this and you there's been no reports coming in about engine out hunches that's another interesting call now ukraine's army is carrying out a military operation in the east and the plane's fuselage colors you know they are reminiscent of the russian flag and you briefly touched on this but is it possible

that it could have been shot down by the military who who took it for a russian flag instead of a malaysian colors. red white and blue a common cause for it because you may also so british airways. for your many many other airlines i think i don't have i say this i don't think it was a case of mistaken identity. malaysian versus one other i think at that altitude at that time it's very difficult to distinguish civilian from military. yeah that's a fair point we are i mean any of your expert opinion on this because we're seeing large chunks of debris. and i'm told this is quite unusual maybe it's not for such a crash i mean does that tell us anything about the the speed of the impact that perhaps it was a slow impact what would you say a large chance breeze somewhat unusual and you got the benefit of the vision which

i don't have but if the aircraft was abruptly stopped and shell that would probably produce larger chunks of the reason to hit the ground moving along at cruise altitude cruise the certainly other a craft accidents that have occurred. with mechanical values you can have a trial of debris several kilometers long and usually quite small so this is a so yes i do again i think that's another very interesting point but i think you can sum up all of the interesting points we have and you still don't have one scary . place where s. so was three hours after and only disaster always the wire. just finally just to get your thoughts on this if in fact it was shot down do you know of any other cases like this in history we've got the lockerbie bomber cetera et cetera but being shot down altitude is is something i've got have you ever come across it.

there are two very famous examples because the u.s. . and iranian airlines. are the shades of blue in the ninety's and of course the korean airline we shot down as it flew over russians are supposed to be. a few years ago want to live in. ok andrew charlton managing director of aviation advocacy we appreciate your input and giving us a lot of knowledge as well and on what could have occurred thank you. very much it's not the first time a civil plane has been done over ukraine thirteen years ago a similar incident happened over the black sea by the sea we can join medina in the studio once again so two thousand and one this occurred give us some background into water happened margot's the present that many people now that particular case is in many people's minds at the moment because they. were really one that i

believe is worth mentioning in that particular situation where in as long as you well we just discussed with the x. . here in the studio some of the presidents of clients now again coming back to that particular case indeed it happened in october two thousand and one every russian commercial plane was from television to novosibirsk and it was flying over the area of the black sea when suddenly the russian ground control center reported that it lost contact with the plane and that the chats somehow disappeared from the russian raider now there were. shortly after it was revealed that the plane went down into the sea in there's been right after that it's a number of for there are conflicting reports coming in lots of speculations coming in again in terms of conflicting reports there was

a pilot from my belief or meaning in plane of the moment was crossing the varia the area very close to the place where the russian jets went into the sea and the pilot said that he saw the russian plane explode before it crashed into the sea of course there's been a number of different versions behind many people the investigation was underway the first number one for the first prior version was of course that there might have been a terrorist attack but later it was revealed that the crash actually happened due to ukrainian missed that brought down the plane accidentally during military acts is this military drills that were taking place in that area at that particular time so basically what happened is that mistakenly ukrainian military forces shot down a russian commercial airliner over the black sea now the thing about that case is

that it took ukraine a while to acknowledge that it was behind the plane crash and military ukraine military officials were heatedly denying that they were at fault and they only acknowledged right after the international abolition society. from their side acknowledged that that was. now there were overall over seventy passengers on board of that plane no one survived and that was the president that happened again back in two thousand and one what we are talking about here it is of course a large scale tragedy and it is yet unknown what was the reason behind that plane crash and now. this is the main question now of course it is obsolete medina thanks so much for bringing us those details. ok let's.