It’s the last stop for Russia to avoid pariah status

The outrageous response of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the murder of the 298 civilians aboard MH17 shows he is determined to march in the bloody footsteps of his Soviet predecessors.Having supplied the soldiers and the weapons responsible for bringing down the Malaysian Airlines aircraft, the former KGB officer is now pretending that Russia had no responsibility for the destruction of the airliner.

This is a contemptible insult to the global community. It is clear from the conversation Prime Minister Tony Abbott had with US President Barack Obama 24-hours after the plane was shot down that these two leaders are in little doubt about Russia’s guilt in this matter. Mr Abbott, in particular, stressed the need to bring those responsible for this monstrous crime to justice. He strongly believes that those who carried out this evil act are criminals and those who support them are criminals. He knows that as the nation absorbs the realisation that 36 Australians were among those slaughtered there will be an even greater determination for justice to be done. President Obama, who has skated through the fallout from a series of seriously disastrous decisions on the international front, is adamant that the rocket attack on the civilian airliner is a game changer. Under the circumstances, he cannot simply wring his hands as he has done in the past over the Syrian crisis, or the murder by terrorists of the US Ambassador to Libya. He has called the attack an “outrage of unspeakable proportions” and demanded that the world hold Russia to its word as he echoed the international calls for a credible investigation of the atrocity. “The eyes of the world are on eastern Ukraine, and we are going to make sure that the truth is out,” he said Friday as he confirmed earlier intelligence reports the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile fired from an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists. “A group of separatists can't shoot down military transport planes or, they claim, fighter jets, without sophisticated military equipment, and that comes from Russia,” he said. The US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power was more blunt when she spoke at a special meeting of the UN Security Council. “This tragedy only underscores the urgency and determination with which we insist that Russia immediately take concrete steps to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, support a sustainable ceasefire and following the path toward peace,” she said. “This war can be ended. Russia can end this war. Russia must end this war.” The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country lost at least 189 people in the disaster, according to the latest figures, said his government was resolute. “The message of the cabinet is that we want to research what has happened, we want to determine who was behind this, and I would like to quote my Australian counterpart (Abbott): ‘If there were terrorists involved, if there were intentions, if somebody did this on purpose, then we want everything to be done in order to get those involved in court and for them to be punished accordingly.’ But we first have to make sure that investigations can take place as objectively and as honestly as possible.” The Russians, through their separatist puppets in Ukraine have determinedly thwarted the investigation from its initial stages. Congratulatory conversations between the pro-Russian separatists believed responsible for the rocket attack have been denied. Officials from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have been blocked from fully inspecting the crash site. The two “black box” flight recorders which the separatists had said they had recovered have now disappeared and the separatists are denying their own earlier claims. Meanwhile, as millions of grief-stricken Australians share the sadness of those whose loved ones have been slain and view with incredible sadness the pictures of the young children barbarically killed, it is worth remembering our response to another outrage that took place on Russian soil almost exactly ten years ago. Then, on September 1, 2004, in the small town of Beslan, in North Ossetia, a member of the Russian Federation, Chechen terrorists captured and murdered 334 people, 186 of them schoolchildren dressed in their best as they returned to school after their summer break. In November, Australia hosted a fundraiser for the survivors, attended by schoolgirl Viktoria Ktsoeva, who had become the “face of Beslan” after a picture of her clutching a small golden cross in the aftermath was carried by the media around the world. Mr Putin was President of Russia then, as he is now. Australia’s response to the Beslan massacre was immediate and compassionate. Mr Putin’s response to the attack, according to numerous independent investigations, compounded the tragedy and led to more deaths than might otherwise have occurred. Having suffered such heartbreak at the hands of terrorists, Russia must now decide whether it is going to offer the world a compassionate response and assist in a thorough and transparent investigation or whether it is going to it going to sink into a moral abyss as a pariah state, an international outlaw. We won’t warn Mr Putin, but there is clearly only one honourable path before him and the choice is his alone.