Tony Abbott has insisted he will not just accept Vladimir Putin’s assurances of support for Australia’s call for a full and open investigation but will “hold him to his word”.



In their first conversation since the downing of MH17, the Australian prime minister confirmed he had spoken to the Russian president, adding: "He said all the right things and now we need him to be as good as his word."

"I’m not going to have this conversation and say: ‘Oh, that’s nice, President Putin said everything will work out fine,’ and just accept that,” said Abbott, who would not reveal the full details of the conversation.

“I am now going to try to ensure that Australia, as far as one humanly can, we insist upon these things happening.”

Abbott said an Australian team, including police, was already in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, awaiting access to the crash site.

The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has met intelligence officers in Washington, including the head of the CIA. Australia has sponsored a resolution to the United Nations Security Council for investigators to have “full and unfettered access” to the crash site, which is in territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels.

Bishop said she expected all council members to back the resolution – which Russia can veto – and urged both sides in the Ukrainian conflict not to use bodies as “hostages or pawns”.

“All countries must support the return of the bodies of loved ones,” said Bishop, who spoke to some of the Australian families of victims on Sunday night. “I cannot imagine any other air crash in history where, days later, bodies are still laying in the field.

“This is not a time to use bodies as hostages or pawns in a Ukrainian-Russian conflict. It is time for these bodies to be brought home and it’s time for an investigation into who is responsible for this atrocity to begin.”

Bishop is expected to hold talks with the Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, and the UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, about the resolution.

Abbott again expressed frustration at seeing footage of interference at the wreckage site, saying Australians were rightly angry.

“Since the time the plane was downed, the wreckage has been picked over, it has been trashed, it has been trampled, God knows what’s happened there,” Abbott told Macquarie radio.

“Even the latest footage, it is more like a garden clean-up than a forensic investigation.”

A total of 298 people were killed in the incident and as late as Sunday night, the Australian government confirmed the death toll of Australian citizens and residents had climbed to 37.

Abbott and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, have taken a very strong line against Russia to help investigators get access to the site. Over the weekend, Rutte said Russia had “one last chance” to show it was serious about using its influence in the pro-Russian territory.

Abbott said his priority was to do "the right thing" by the Australian victims and their families by ensuring bodies are treated with respect, that the crash site is secured and a thorough investigation is undertaken.

"Then of course, we have to punish the guilty," he said. "We have to do our best to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice."﻿

The acting opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek, was more cautious in her response to Putin’s assurances to Australia and would not be drawn as to whether the Russian president could be trusted to keep his word on supporting a full investigation.

“If the suggestions that Russian-backed rebels have fired this missile and it was supplied by the Russians, then there is a degree of culpability and we would expect consequences to that culpability,” Plibersek said. “But it is very important to establish this in a methodical way beyond doubt.”

