Protesters hurled eggs and overturned diplomats’ cars Saturday outside the Russian embassy in Kiev just hours after the Ukrainian president vowed to attack Russian-backed rebels who killed 49 people when they shot down a military cargo plane.
The air attack early Saturday morning over eastern Ukraine — just miles from the Russian border — came as Russian-made tanks and rocket launchers flooded into rebel hands.
It was the conflict’s highest single death toll since the anti-Western insurgency began and came only a week after new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke of peace.
US Secretary of State John Kerry pressed Russia to stop shipping weapons to the separatists, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to express “dismay” over the deaths of the nine crew members and 40 troops.
One rebel leader, Denis Pushilin, admitted to Russian state television that the rebels did have tanks, but didn’t say where they originated. Russia has denied it’s supplying tanks to separatists.
A White House spokeswoman said, “We condemn the shooting down of the Ukrainian military plane and continue to be deeply concerned about the situation in eastern Ukraine, including by the fact that militant and separatist groups have received heavy weapons from Russia, including tanks.”
But the State Department also condemned the Ukrainian protestors rioting outside the embassy — noting that Ukraine must meet its international obligations to provide “adequate security.”