mary schiavo and ntsb inspector. this scene right now, this scene where the plane crashed is under the control right now of pro-russian separatists. we re hearing that the black boxes, according to ukrainian intelligence, are already in possession of moscow. what does that do to the investigation? well, it s going to compromise the investigation and that comment based on past history and the shootdown and in the previous korean airliner shootdown by russia five years before that. in both cases there was great discussion and disagreement over whaum what happened. attempts to identify the plane as a commercial jetliner before shootdown and all that was on the black boxes and they were hidden, the russians kept them and, in fact, denied their existence and what was on them for years. so, it could greatly compromise the situation. you know, there are other
identified so far, no americans. the blame game well under way, unfortunately ukraine officials calling for blood. they accused pro-russian separatists of shooting down the plane, but russian president vladimir putin is quickly firing back. the military campaign in the area that is to blame. the united nations security council, including russia, set to meet as countries step up the pressure on the separatists to let impartial inspectors reach this site safely. we are putting the full resources of cnn into our breaking news coverage. we are back now with our excellent panel, senior international correspondent nic robertson in kiev and richard quest, our military analyst, rick francona and michelle konsinski and mary schiavo.
monitors have been detained by these separatists. first of all, are your people okay? anyone still being detained? sure. thanks for asking. yes, they re fine. we have no one being held right now. but having said that, that incident where eight of our colleagues were held for up to a month by the way, they were taken very close to the area where the plane went down. you know, that was a real shock to our system. and so we re being extra, extra careful in terms of security. there s a lot of groups, there s a lot of fire power. it s actually very scary in some areas. very difficult for a monitoring mission to operate but we re assuming that risk and we re trying to get our job done as best we can. michael, be careful over there. you guys do very important work. but i know it s risky, dangerous. so be very careful. still ahead, we have new information on the u.s. role in the investigation of the
why the regulators didn t close that pathway. why did they allow air traffic to continue to fly over what they must have known by this stage was a dangerous area to be flying over. bearing in mind that parts of crimea and the black sea had already been closed. richard, also on that point, i heard you and others remind others that if we could describe it this way a major kind of highway for air traffic. they are traveling at a very different altitude than other military aircraft would be and they would be out of range. they would think of this type of most types of missiles that anyone would get their hands on. the ukrainians had restricted, up to flight level 30, flight level 32,000. but this plane was above that. so, it was supposedly higher than the danger zone. now, of course, this whole area has been closed by the faa.
it s surface-to-air missile. it can shoot four targets at the same time. it can shoot targets up to 45,000 feet, i believe. in listening to this tape, it seems like these guys didn t know exactly how to use this weapon? or didn t know what they were aiming at. it appears listening to these recordings which we obtained yesterday that they thought they were shooting at a ukrainian military plane, and in fact earlier this week, ukrainian separatists, ukrainian officials say two other ukrainian planes. and you hear in those conversations they are surprised, in effect, thinking that it was an an-26. this is a ukrainian military plane. and there s other evidence even beyond that recorded phone conversation because one of these rebel leaders amazingly tweeted the time at around the time that the plane went down that they had just shot down a