The WSJ reports,"Ukraine's president and prime minister didn't immediately assign blame for the incident.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk ordered a special investigation into the crash, as well as the downing of a Ukrainian AN-26 military cargo aircraft and a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet in the same area earlier this week.
"This is the third tragic incident in recent days after the AN-26 and SU-25 were shot down," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement. "We can't rule out that this plane was also shot down, but we underscore that the Ukrainian armed forces were not carrying out any actions to strike airborne targets."
If a passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine, attackers would have had to use a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system, not the shoulder-fired weapons that are more accessible and easier to use.
Those weapons, nicknamed manpads, have been used in attacks against commercial aircraft in the past. But their range is much lower than the 30,000-feet cruising altitude.
Mr. Porosheno expressed condolences to the relatives of those killed in the accident and said Ukrainian authorities were engaging in all possible rescue efforts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his sympathies to the Prime Minister of Malaysia for the crash over Ukrainian airspace, according to a statement published on the Kremlin's website. "The Russian head of state asked to convey his most sincere words of sympathy and support to the families and friends of the victims," the Kremlin said.
In 2001, the Ukrainian military mistakenly shot down a commercial passenger jet that was en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk with a land-to-air missile that was fired during a military exercise. All the 66 passengers and 12 crew members on board the plane were killed in the blast.
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak expressed shock and said the country was launching an immediate investigation into the incident".
