Kerry lays out evidence of Russian complicity
US and European leaders have also called for international investigators to be given full access to the crash site after rebels in eastern Ukraine took control of the recovered bodies.
Kerry told NBC’s Meet The Press programme: “There’s a stacking up of evidence here, which Russia needs to help account for.
“We are not drawing the final conclusion here. But there is a lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible.”
Kerry expressed horror at how pro-Moscow separatists at the crash sites in eastern Ukraine treated the remains of victims from Thursday's disaster, criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and threatened “additional steps” against Moscow.
“Drunken separatists have been piling bodies into trucks and removing them from the site,” Kerry said. “What’s happening is really grotesque and it is contrary to everything President Putin and Russia said they would do.”
The key question of who controlled the collection of evidence at the sprawling site in rebel-held territory dominated the day’s developments.
International monitors say armed rebels have limited their access to the crash site and Ukrainian officials said armed rebels took the bodies away from their workers by force.
A wave of international outrage over how the bodies of the plane crash victims were being handled came amid fears that the armed rebels who control the crash site could be tampering with any potential evidence.
Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Borodai said the bodies recovered would remain in refrigerated train cars in the rebel-held town of Torez, nine miles from the crash site, until the arrival of an international aviation delegation.
“The bodies will go nowhere until experts arrive,” Borodai said, speaking in the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
He insisted that rebels had not interfered with the crash investigation.
Ukrainian government officials, meanwhile, prepared a disaster crisis centre in the government-held city of Kharkiv, expecting to receive the bodies, but those hopes appeared to have been delayed or even dashed.
Deputy prime minister Volodymyr Groysman said 192 bodies and eight body parts had been loaded onto the railway cars.
The leaders of France, Germany and Britain issued a statement demanding that Putin make sure that pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine give full access to investigators at the Malaysian plane crash site, or risk the ire of Europe.
French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to demand that Putin should force separatists controlling the site to “finally allow rescuers and investigators to have free and total access to the zone”.
Ukraine claims Russia has been sending sophisticated arms to the rebels, a charge that Moscow denies.
The US embassy in Kiev issued a strong statement pointing to Russian complicity in arming the rebels, saying it has concluded “that Flight MH17 was likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine”.
It said over the weekend of July 12-13, “Russia sent a convoy of military equipment with up to 150 vehicles, including tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and multiple rockets launchers” to the separatists.
The statement also said Russia was training separatist fighters in south-west Russia, including on air defence systems.
The rebels have been limiting the movements of international monitors and journalists at the site, which is near the Russian border.
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