stand ready to provide any assistance that is requested by the authorities. we ve also been in touch with the ntsb. we do know that they don t have anything on their record, like many of the agencies here in the united states, many of them are aware of the reports, but at this point don t have any confirmed information for themselves. but if we can, anderson, go back to that flightaware.com graphic that we had there, because we actually had a chance to our producer, mike, had a chance to speak to the co-founder of this website. and what we re looking at here, that plane that you see there, that icon, he tells us that this is just two to three minutes before they lost contact with this plane. so that position that you re looking at there on that graphic, again, just two to three, possibly four minutes before they lost contact with the plane. we do know that they are able to
gain their information based on transponder signals, and they are working, as we speak to you, to gather more information. but the basic data points that we know about this plane at this time is that it was flying at some 33,000 feet traveling at roughly just over 500 miles per hour, anderson. just a sidenote here, you know, totally separate situation, but this just so happens to happen on the anniversary of twa flight 800, which happened right here in the united states. and i bring that up because although we do not know what caused this plane to go down, the story will be told through the wreckage and just how this wreckage looks, you know, whether it s very tiny pieces, whether it s large chunks, we ll get the story as far as what happened when that wreckage is found. anderson? renee, i appreciate it. i want to go to our jim sciutto who is also in washington with a new statement from ukraine s
advanced missiles capable of striking aircraft at altitude. now, the ones we ve been aware of so far, so-called man pad shoulder-fired missiles, they re known to have a range of altitude of about 11,000 feet. this would, of course, be above it. but as barbara said, indications that the plane that went down on monday might have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile with a greater altitude range and the belief of u.s. military officials that that came from the russian side of the border. but anyway, these are very worrisome clues as they are pieced together. but just as i know you will as well, john, just to warn our viewers, they are at this point just clues as opposed to conclusive information. no, they are clues. it is the context of what has been going on in that area where this flight lost contact. and based on reuters, of course, may have crashed. jim sciutto, thank you so much. i want to tell our viewers right now that the white house says that president obama is aware of t
what we have seen, increasing numbers of amateur video that show heavy weaponry and missiles that have come into ukraine from russia, according to ukrainian officials. it really makes sense given how sophisticated these weapons are. you have to wonder where exactly did they come from. and there have been accusations that the recent deaths of i think it was nearly 30 ukrainian soldiers were caused by a ground missile system. that s a very heavy device that s mounted on a truck. so the fear potentially here are one of three variations. the ukrainians are already saying no, it s not us, when we know they probably have the capacity to do that. but it wouldn t really make sense for them to be shooting planes out of their own sky because they re most likely to be ukrainian military jets or civilian airliners. that doesn t quite hold up. could it be separatists? that, of course, is what many people are suggesting. they ve already denied it. particularly what richard was saying earlier about
call happened. they said that that call was initiated by moscow, and it was supposed to specifically be about the additional sanctions that the u.s. just imposed on russia over the situation there in ukraine. but the white house press secretary was asked repeatedly, well, was this plane discussed? what was the timing of that? and all they would say at this point is that the press secretary is not in a position to disclose whether this was talked about between vladimir putin and president obama, anderson. michelle kosinski, i appreciate that update. we should point out that a number of news networks have been airing some footage of what appears to be smoke rising on a horizon, apparently reportedly from a plane crash. we cannot independently confirm that that is actually a plane crash from the malaysian jet that we are referring to. it is possible it s something that occurred earlier in the day. it s why we have not been going with this video, though others