its half of the arms race. so if we can t get putin to stop, then i think we probably should and will increase western military support for the ukrainian government. i think the more important thing is to get putin to stop at the risk of having more sanctions placed on his country if he doesn t and presenting a united front with western europe to that effect. all right. we ll leave it there. andrea mitchell and michael o hanlan, thank you. ahead, we re keeping an eye on our other major story of the day, gaza, where just moments ago we saw rockets being fired. the israeli prime minister is already talking about expanding the ground operation. we ll talk to the chair of the senate foreign relations committee about that and how the u.s. is dealing with ukraine and russia over the downed malaysia airlines plane. first, the search for answers and the difficulty of conducting a plane crash investigation in a war zone. i m feeling physically sick.
samantha power today delivered stinging remarks implicating russia for its role in the separatist movement that s blamed for bringing down that plane. i want you to take a quick listen. on july 14th, separatists claimed credit for the downing of a ukrainian military cargo plane flying at 6,000 meters. on july 16th, they claimed credit for the downing of a ukrainian fighter jet. if indeed russian-backed separatists were behind this attack on a civilian airliner, they and their backers would have good reason to cover up evidence of their crime. and andrea, how might this tragedy impact the administration s ability to really convince europe to start standing up to the russians more on ukraine? if not now, when? so far the u.s. has been pretty much standing alone against vladimir putin. angela merkel has come along to a certain extent. certainly david cameron in the u.k. italy and france have resisted. so europe as a whole has not done big sanctions, big pressure.
all afternoon, this comes less than 24 hours after president obama announced the stiffest round of sanctions yet again. st russia. thank you, kristin. i want to go to michael from time magazine. we have news that vice president biden is confirming that the plane was shot down and suggested there may have been americans on board. what is interesting beyond that news, vice president biden has been the chief interlocutor between the americans and ukrainians. what role do you think he ll be playing back and forth? he s clearly the white house point person and he s been there three or four times in the past few months and recently for the president s inauguration in the ukraine. he s very close to the country and has represented us quite well there. i think he will be central to whatever they do. eugene, you heard kristen
the emergency beacon and he gave specific coordinates. does that mean they have a good idea of where the black boxes are and what do you think this portends in terms of the investigation itself? i would imagine the malaysians, the dutch and everyone else that had a citizen on that plane would not be content to let ukrainian authorities or russian authorities handle the investigation. so i think they will know exactly where the black boxes are. since the wreckage is on the ground, we re not talking another situation like this malaysian plane at sea where they have no idea where to look for the black boxes, so they re there and there might be a race to get to on them first. i remember after the soviet union infamously shot down a korean airlines 747 back in 1982 there was this huge race to get to the scene of the black boxes first. it was in the ocean well off the shore of japan, as it turned out and the americans and soviets were both race racing to get to
information either at that time. this phone call clearly was arranged in advance of the plane coming down to talk about the sanctions yesterday and to the broader ukraine situation, president putin, we are told, initiated the call. it s unclear what it would have accomplished. putin complained to the united states and to president obama that they were misreading his intensions and unfairly treating him and so forth, but it is not clear what the actual purpose was because president obama isn t going to retreat on the sanctions at this point. eugene, let me just, before we go to break really quickly, john mccain said there will be hell to pay if this plane was shot down by russian military or separatists, the fact that there were 23 americans onboard, domestically there will be a great appetite as there always is on the right to litigate this as somehow a failure of the presidency. that goes without saying. but will there be hell to pay? i think within the republican party, you w