Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said Russia was in part to blame for the downing of Flight 17 because it had provided anti-air weaponry to separatist rebels in Ukraine. Speaking on CBS' Face the Nation, Kerry said the U.S. had intel showing that a convoy of heavy weapons crossed from Russia into eastern Ukraine in recent weeks.
From his remarks:
We know that there are Russians who are leaders of the separatists. Some, not all. Some. And we know that the Russians have armed the separatists, trained the separatists, support the separatists, and have, to date, not publicly called on the separatists to stand down or to be part of the solution. […] So there's an enormous amount of evidence, even more evidence than I just documented, that points to the involvement of Russia in providing these system, training the people on them. [CBS]
Kerry also assailed "drunken separatists" who reportedly seized at gunpoint the bodies of some 200 crash victims and loaded them on to train cars bound for a rebel-held city. And he called on Russia to reign in the rebels so international observers could better investigate the incident.