Russia Separatists Control Crash Site of Downed Malaysian Airliner
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Behind me is just part of what is left of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just hope that none of these children -- or the grandchildren will go before you.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You saw next to three of the passengers' names the capital "I." As we now know, the letter "I" stands for infant.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's crazy. You don't expect to go into an airplane and get blown out of the sky.</s>CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: The pictures are jolting, the information is fluid. We're so glad to have you with us as we walk through this morning. I'm Christi Paul.</s>VICTOR BLACKWOOD, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwood. It's 10:00 o'clock here on the East Coast, 7:00 out west. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. And first this morning, of course, the growing international alarm that rebel gunmen are keeping some invesitgators from the crash site, although we know that the OSCE investigators, those monitors, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- they are there today. A little more flexibility than they had yesterday, but still --</s>PAUL: Even though there is a smaller teamm there, of them, but they do seem to have a little more mobility than they did yesterday, it's being reported. Now Germany is urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to pressure these rebels to let the investigators in even further. Malaysia Airlines issued, too, its latest list of the 298 people from 11 nations who were aboard the flight when it was shot down out of the sky over eastern Ukraine. And most of the passengers come from the Netherlands. There was one American as well.</s>BLACKWELL: International observers at the crash site say they have been hearing gunfire and also explosions this morning. Witnesses say some human remains put in body bags and put to the side of the road.</s>PAUL: The Ukrainian government is accusing pro-Russian rebels of removing more than three dozen bodies as well as destroying evidence, they say.</s>BLACKWELL: And there has been heavy fighting about 60 miles from the field of debris and wreckage there.</s>PAUL: Chris Cuomo, the co-host of CNN's NEW DAY, joins us now live from the crash site in eastern Ukraine. And Chris, I know that it was a haul for you to get there. It was not easy to get to that crash site. When you got there, what struck you most?</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, that's hard to answer, Christi, because this is such an unusual situation. You have the obvious tragedy of this plane being taken out of the skies, and everyone onboard gone and laying in the field around us for the most part. But it has happened because of, probably, and in the middle of, an outright civil war. There's no question about accounts of people hearing gunfire. They have used gunfire here today to move journalists when they don't want them to go beyond a certain point. These are local militias very intent on making a definite show of force, of blaming Ukraine for the tragedy of taking this plane out of the air. The checkpoints show such indications of heavy fire I haven't seen anything like it in quite some time. Trees completely stripped some 40, 50 feet up by big artillery shells, men hiding in these very shallow trenches. They've obviously been anticipating and engaging in very heavy warfare. So now you have a situation where there's no question that even in the worst of circumstances, Christi and Victor, you expect a certain level of dignity. It's not being met here. Bodies are starting to be collected. Some are still being missed. They're just being put in bags on the side of the road. These are not people -- they're local towns folk, not people who know how to do this. Things like the fuselage behind me, that's the tail section of the plane, there's so much there for investigators to look at and catalogue. And things have been disturbed here. Things have been taken. The bodies are not getting the dignity they deserve. So this is about, s troubled a set of circumstances as you can come upon here.</s>BLACKWELL: The Ukrainian officials are accusing some of these pro- Russian rebels of tampering with evidence and the bodies there. Are you seeing any of that?</s>CUOMO: Am I seeing tampering? No. I'm seeing local townsfolk moving bodies, putting them on the side of the road. Does the luggage, do things look as if they've been disturbed? Absolutely. Why? It's almost what you don't see. I've been in, unfortunately, in situations like this before, and you see the trapping of someone's life. You see their purse. You see their wallet. You see their cellphone. You see nothing of anything valuable here right now, Victor, and that's disturbing. And, you know the men here are very hostile, they're very aggressive. But I have not seen anything take anything and go. You ask them about the black boxes, they say it's not for us to deal with. We don't know anything about the black boxes.</s>PAUL: I wanted to ask you about the rebels if you had had any exchanges with them. When you say they're aggressive, how aggressively do you think they are trying to, dare I say, protect this area right now?</s>CUOMO: Well, I wouldn't say "protect." I would say control. And I think it's a difference with a distinction, because, you know, how aggressive. They point weapons that are loaded at you, Christi, and they point it up towards the sky to say, if you don't move back, suggesting they're going to fire. They have fired. There's obviously active fighting going on 150 clicks from here where dozens of people reportedly have been killed. So they're no joke and they want to be taken seriously. But I'll tell you, when I came here, for me it's not about the civil war. It's important that people know it's still going on. It's important that people understand that this happened as a function of it in all likelihood, and that, you know, there's probably a lot to the suggestion that until Russia makes it unacceptable for this to be going on it will probably continue. But the first thing that I felt inclined to do here was to just say a simple prayer for the bodies that are here, the lives that were lost and for their families, because they're not receiving the dignity they should. I'm really -- it's acceptable to me that you're not seeing what we're seeing here. Ordinarily I want to show you at home what we're seeing because you can't be here. I don't want you to see this, and I certainly don't want the families of the people involved here to see it, because there is not the dignity there should be in place right now, and there could be, Christi, ant Victor. There could be. They could let the right people in. They couldn't make it a death march to get here, and if they had, things would be done much more quickly than they are.</s>BLACKWELL: Chris Cuomo, host of CNN's NEW DAY there at the crash site of MH-17. Chris, thank you so much.</s>PAUL: Thanks, Chris. And let's talk about this more with experts including CNN aviation analyst Jeff Wise and Miles O'Brien.</s>BLACKWELL: We're joined by also by Barry Pavel, the vice president and director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council. Barry, first to you. The State Department says this is a game changer in terms of Russian relations. How does this change the game, and in your view, what should be the international response to Russia? Should there be more sanctions? Are sanctions enough?</s>BARRY PAVEL, VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, BRENT SCOWCROFT CENTER: I'll take your second question first. I do think the international response will be somewhat heightening sanctions. But let's talk about this game changer issue. I'm not sure people are completely seeing clearly what Putin's worldview is and what's going on here. Let's think about this weapons system. It takes months of training for it to be used effectively. So there's only two options. Either Russian specialists trained these individuals for six months or it was directly manned by Russian specialists. I think people are confusing terms like "rebels," and it's not really a civil war. This is Russian destabilization of a sovereign country. Putin is likely to continue doing both things. He's likely to continue the destabilization, and he's likely to continue the diplomacy, the appearing nice, appearing lawful. This is, the strategy's going to continue, and I think we're papering things over when we suggest there's rebels or pro-Russian separatists, they're Russian pros, mixed in with the pro-Russians.</s>PAUL: Miles, I wanted to ask you. We heard from the transport minister in Malaysia earlier today saying there were 75 different airplanes that flew over this route in the two days prior to us taking this route, but a lot of people look at this and say, this is a conflict zone. Why was Ukraine, I'm wondering, allowed to keep this airspace open?</s>MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, we should also point out that there were quite a few airlines that scrupulously avoided this area, British Airways and Air France among them, who for months have not flown anywhere near there. This is an interesting question of who's responsible for the airspace. The airspace was closed from 32,000 feet and below, and technically, Malaysia flying at 33,000 feet, to the letter of the law, was OK to be there. But as a pilot, I'm going to tell you, I like to always have a fallback position, a way out. And if you're at 33,000 feet, and for some reason you need to descend, because of a decompression or engine loss, or whatever, you're going straight into a no-fly zone. They were right on the margin of safety, anyway, and, on top of that, there have been four or five shoot-downs just in the past month at relatively high altitudes. So there was all kinds of evidence that this was not a great place to be, and yet there was some sort of apathy that crept into their decision-making process, and, frankly, this is a commercial decision as well. It took, would take them a little bit out of their way and might cause a little more fuel burn over the course of that 12-hour flight. So in the end I think we know it wasn't safe to be there for sure now, but it's not like this should be a surprise. There had been several aircraft shot down in advance of that, and any airline that continued to fly into that airspace knowing all of that was not really flying with safety number one on their list.</s>BLACKWELL: Jeff what do you expect the impact of this will be moving forward, considering that Miles says that this was in some ways a commercial decision, they were at the edge, I guess, of what you're saying, edge of the safe zone here. Do you expect an expansion of possibly no-fly zones moving forward as it relates to commercial airliners?</s>JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, clearly going forward, there's going to be a lot more care and attention paid to excluding commercial aircraft from airspace that may be problematic. I mean, I think Miles is absolutely right. Malaysian Airlines chose a route that was just barely outside of a dangerous airspace. And you know, it comes down to money. The British Airways, when they went around Ukraine to avoid any potential problem, it cost them money. They had to go further, they had to burn more fuel. And we see that, this is an incredible coincidence, that Malaysia lost two 777s. They only had 15, 15 out of total around the world, 19,000 commercial aircraft exist around the world, and 15 of them were Malaysian Airlines 777s. And we lost two in them in the span of four months. That's an incredible coincidence. What ties them together, we don't know, but certainly the unwillingness to spend money that isn't necessary. We saw it in the case of MH-370 that Malaysia had chosen the cheapest Inmarsat package that didn't include geo-location data in their communications, and so that was one of the reasons it was so hard to locate where the plane is, and of course it remains missing to this day.</s>PAUL: All righty, a dreadful coincidence when all is said and done. Jeff Weiss, Barry, Miles O'Brien, thank you, gentlemen, for being with us, sharing your insights.</s>BLACKWELL: Thank you all. Turning now to another major story, the crisis in the Middle East. We're going to go live to Gaza where clashes between Israel and Hamas have now increased along with the death toll and the destruction there.</s>PAUL: Plus, oh, my goodness, this story and stories of people who were scheduled to be on Malaysian air flight 17, they escaped death.