RED LINE CROSSED

The UN Security Council opened its extraordinary meeting with a minute silence. Participants of the meeting representing the world's leading powers commemorated the terrible tragedy: the day before, a passenger plane of Malaysia Airlines crashed en route from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur. All 295 people aboard the Boeing-777 including 80 children were killed. 

It became clear from the very outset that the accident could not have been caused by pilot error or technical malfunction. The aircraft crashed on the territory of Ukraine's Donetsk Region which is aflame with a bloody war. Very few people doubt today that the passenger aircraft on an international flight was deliberately shot down. 

As had been expected, Vitaliy Churkin and Yuriy Serheyev, Russia's and Ukraine's respective permanent representatives at the UN, exchanged accusations in their speeches laying the blame for the tragedy on Kiev and Moscow, respectively. Their statements were consonant with what the world had already heard from the two presidents. In his official statement shortly after the tragedy, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the accident as an "act of international terrorism" saying that "the whole world has seen the true face of the aggressor". The Russian president's reaction was not long in coming either. "This tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land, if the military actions had not been renewed in southeast Ukraine," Vladimir Putin said. 

As can be seen, both the Ukrainian and the Russian sides are trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for what happened and blame it on the other side. Representatives of the Ukrainian authorities and separatists are declaring in unison today that they have no facilities in the crash area that could hit an aircraft flying at an altitude of 10 km. Investigators are still to determine each party's degree of responsibility. 

It is too early to say whose arguments will prove to be more convincing. The Ukrainian side happened to have many facts including data of a radio intercept of a conversation between leaders of the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine in which they admit the fact of elimination of a passenger plane. Judging from the contents of the conversation, the liner was taken for a military aircraft. For its part, the Russian Defence Ministry has calculated that "the route of the aircraft and its impact site fall within the impact zone of two Ukrainian long-range surface-to-air missile  batteries and three medium-range surface-to-air missile batteries of the Buk-M1 system". 

Anyway, now the UN, the OSCE and other international organizations will have to provide independent expert assessment of the tragedy in eastern Ukraine in order to establish the true picture of what happened. But it is not so simple to do. It is clear that even if transcripts of the flight recorders definitely prove that the plane was shot down, they certainly cannot help to identify the party at fault. 

The question is different. Analysts say that the scale of this tragedy has given a new dimension to the Ukraine conflict and will increase pressure on its parties. Or, as Ukrainian Prime Minister A.Yatsenyuk put it, "the red line has been crossed". Formerly the West had no consensus on what was happening in Ukraine. Until now, many European countries whose business was largely tied to Russia, preferred declarative statements to practical steps. Therefore they reluctantly tightened sanctions against Moscow harming their own economic interests notwithstanding the position of other European partners of theirs who almost insisted on sending NATO troops to assist Ukraine. Now the situation will clearly change and the number of supporters of "soft sanctions" against Russia will diminish significantly. 

The death in the air crash of citizens of the Netherlands, Germany, the USA and other states came as a wake-up call to those who took the conflict in Ukraine as something external. The disaster that killed many Europeans may quite possibly affect the stance of Brussels and individual EU member states on what has been going on in Ukraine for a few months now and is taken by some as civil war. 

Leaders of the EU member states and other countries have made their statements during the days passed since the tragedy happened. One could say that US President Barack Obama expressed the common attitude of the West to what had happened. "Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine. We also know that this is not the first time a plane has been shot down in eastern Ukraine. Moreover, we know that these separatists have received a steady flow of support from Russia," the US president said.   

Western leaders had spared no criticism of Russia before for its covert or overt support to separatism in eastern Ukraine. But it is absolutely obvious that if the findings of an international investigation confirm Russia's involvement in the Boeing crash, their cautious diplomatic rhetoric will be gone without a trace. Even today, without waiting for the outcome of the investigation, the hardliners, the so-called "hawks" in Brussels and Ukraine are urging the Western community to take tougher steps against Russia and impose at least one-third of the sanctions being discussed. 

It is quite easy to guess that it will be the case even if Russia's indirect involvement in the tragedy is proved. For Moscow, this scenario is fraught not only with severer sanctions and other demarches from the outside, although even the impact of these steps alone will certainly be very serious. Proving Russia's involvement in this incident that resulted in the death of hundreds of citizens is fraught with a change in many Russians' opinion on their state's policy in Ukraine. That is a much more serious matter. 

No doubt, the crash of a plane with nearly 300 citizens of different states aboard was a turning point in the Ukrainian crisis which has acquired a terrible scale. The tragedy will certainly further intensify international efforts to stabilize the situation in Ukraine. Some experts believe that we can even expect a de-escalation of violence in the region. As the saying goes, "a blessing in disguise". But for how long? At least for the period of international experts' operation in the plane crash zone, intense fighting has been suspended from both sides. However, all one can do now is wait for the outcome of the investigation after which the international community will be able to take a clear stance towards those responsible for this tragedy and the things going on in Ukraine in general. 

In any event, the tragedy in the sky of Donbass has shown once again that there are neither local conflicts in today's world, nor frozen conflicts as they are cynically described by some. The Ukrainian crisis is not the only flaming point at the eastern borders of prosperous Europe which poses a direct threat to the entire euro-Atlantic space, as became clear from the 17 July drama of the Malaysian Airlines plane. And all these conflicts need a prompt settlement with active participation of the international community. This must become even more obvious to all now that the "black Thursday" tragedy has happened in Ukraine.