The downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 has gone from accident to tragedy to catastrophe to horror. The shooting down of a civilian airliner by, according to virtually all accounts, Russian-backed rebels has exposed the situation in eastern Ukraine for what it is: a geostrategic blunder by Russian President Vladimir Putin that will be an indelible blot on history. His casual indifference to the consequences of arming a drunken rabble of rebels may prove to be the defining mark of his presidency.

MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17 when it was blown out of the sky over Ukraine, some 50 km from the Russian border. Some 300 people were on the plane — the exact count is unclear amid reports that infants were onboard and not identified on the passenger list — which was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters when it was, by all available evidence, hit by a Russian surface-to-air missile (SAM).

The wreckage was strewn across fields and villages in rebel-controlled territory. The behavior of those forces in the wake of the accident has confirmed the world's image of them as criminal psychopaths, inebriated and inept. And, incredibly, well armed. They have harassed rescue workers and journalists, contaminating the crash site and removing pieces of the wreckage. Bodies were rotting in the hot weather until Monday when a train with the remains of most of the victims left the site, following a deal struck by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the leader of the pro-Russian separatists.