Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday it was essential for international investigators to be granted safe access to the crash site of flight MH17 in Ukraine.

In a video address released by the Kremlin in the early hours of Monday, Putin vowed that Russia will do all it can to bring about a settlement of the Ukraine conflict following the downing of the Malaysian passenger plane last week.

A chorus of Kremlin-friendly media declared on Monday that the truth about what happened to the Malaysian jet would likely never be found out, accusing the West of heaping the blame on Russia.

"Western press already knows who is to blame for the loss of the airliner -- Russia obviously," said popular tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott Monday hit out at the "shambolic" situation at the MH17 crash site as he demanded Russian President Vladimir Putin back up assurances with action.

Abbott and Putin spoke by telephone overnight in their first conversation since the Malaysia Airlines plane, carrying 298 people, crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, apparently shot down by pro-Russian rebels with a surface-to-air missile.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan's northeast coast early Monday morning, the US Geological Survey said.

Pensioner Oleksandr had just stepped out of his house in eastern Ukraine to say hello to a neighbor when a mortar shell landed at his feet. 

He died several minutes later, with his hand blown off and his stomach torn open.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday told Russia's Vladimir Putin the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane was "totally unacceptable" and appeared to be the work of Russian separatists.

"The evidence suggested that pro-Russian separatists were responsible and the Prime Minister made clear that if Russia wants to put the blame elsewhere they would need to present compelling and credible evidence," a press release about the phonecall from Downing Street said.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in comments published Sunday that Russia was likely behind the downing of a Malaysian airliner as such an operation takes professionals and not "drunken gorillas".

"Very professional personnel is needed to find targets and fire this missile," he told a German newspaper about the suspected shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine which claimed 298 lives.

The missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow, the top U.S. diplomat said Sunday, as the West warned Russia it could face further EU sanctions if it did not press pro-Kremlin separatists to allow unfettered access to the crash site of flight MH17.

"It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia in the hands of separatists," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN, saying that a sophisticated SA-11 system had been used in Thursday's crash.

Russia on Saturday banned entry to 12 U.S. soldiers and officials including the military commander at Guantanamo, accusing them of torture, in an apparent tit-for-tat response to new sanctions by Washington.

Included on the list published by the Russian foreign ministry is a judge who denied a Guantanamo-based prisoner's request that he not be force-fed during Ramadan. Also included are several soldiers who served at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad which was made notorious during the Iraq war by reports of abuse and torture of detainees.

Malaysia issued an impassioned plea Saturday for the MH17 disaster site in Ukraine to be protected from tampering, saying evidence was being compromised in what it called a "betrayal of the lives that were lost."

Concerns are mounting over the integrity of the crash zone in rebel-held eastern Ukraine, with the government in Kiev on Saturday accusing Moscow of helping pro-Russian separatist insurgents destroy evidence.