A week and a half ago, 298 lives came to a sudden and tragic end when flight MH17 was shot out of the sky high above eastern Ukraine. Pieces of those lives, passports, books, computers, clothing still lies scattered over kilometers of fields. Among the first people in the world to see those fragments and the remains of the people they belong to, was Canadian Michael Bochersky. He's part of a special monitoring mission in Ukraine called in to negotiate access to the site from rebel groups. Our Susan Ormiston caught up with him to talk about what he's seen, the work he's done, and the investigation ahead. The wreckage was still smoldering when a small team from the OSCE got there. Michael Bocherky, a Ukrainian Canadian, was thrust into the heart of the disaster. To observe and report back to 57 countries, including Canada, but the team ended up doing much more. No other officials arrived for days. Bocherky and Alexander Hogue became the eyes and ears of the world. We cross paths many times. We finally found a calmer place and time to reflect. Michael, you've been here and out of that site almost daily for the last 10 more than 10 days. What stands out for you amongst your observations about what happened? What really hits you is how people's lives have been tragically and abruptly interrupted. There are a lot of people in that plane that were on their way up to vacation. The other day I found a piece of literature that looked like it was being carried to that AIDS conference in Melbourne. The most sad thing I think I saw was a note written by someone to themselves on the plane. We're on their way to the plane and it says one of the things I want to do is have a good vacation and not blow my budget, but you'd have a good time. I mean, it's stuff like that that really, really stays with you. If I can say on a personal level, we have become almost intimately familiar with that site. We've looked close up at personal belongings. We're able to notice and point out subtle differences. So, for example, going almost daily to the cockpit scene, that has been the most stark in terms of how it's changed. When we first arrived there, again, horrifying stench of death, the cockpit appears to have to slam down into the earth. It was pretty much intact. Over the days, we had seen that piece of cockpit kind of spread out like this. Day two, I believe it was. They were actually men in uniform hacking into it with a power saw. They could have been involved in active body recovery or human rights recovery, we don't know. But even since then, I would say in the past three days, it's been spread out even more. The other striking things, of course, when we arrived here the day after, there were a lot of bodies just lying there exposed to the elements. It was a horrifying thing. It was horrifying. No one was sure who was in control of the bodies left in the fields too long. Finally, they were collected and placed in refrigerated train cars for transport to Harkiv. The site was difficult, but the train was cold and lonely and two days. Cold and lonely and dark. When the Dutch forensic experts, there were only, I think, three of them came, they did the best they could to at least increase the level of dignity if we can even put it that way. That was very, very difficult. The one thing that has powered us through this is knowing that we're doing this for the families, that in this conflict zone where there's no security to the site or anything would happen, anything we could do to provide some semblance of order and process. That not only the bodies of the loved ones, but also their personal belongings and documents get back to the families that was really important to us. The days for us have been very long. Under hot sun, we've seen horrific things that we'll never talk about to anybody else. They spent more time than anyone mapping debris over 35 square kilometers. The team's still reeling from a recent kidnapping and release of eight of their monitors. All this in Butchirk used first three months in the job. Do you sit back sometime and wonder how you landed in this hot spot at the start of your job? I do. And you know, my roots do go back to Ukraine, I'm Ukrainian Canadian, and I've been here many times. I sometimes feel life may never be the same again. Because in a way, we've become kind of the facto spokesperson for this whole recovery effort. You become kind of intimately familiar with the aircraft. And I don't, I have a lot of passion for travel and flying, and I don't know if I'll ever look at it in a second. I would. Yeah. I go back to what do you think we know about what happened to that aircraft today as compared with the first day you came? There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked. It almost looks like machine gunfire. Very, very strong machine gunfire that has left these unique marks that we haven't seen anywhere else. We've also been asked, for example, have we seen any examples of missile? Well, no, we haven't. That's the answer. And even if it was there, we don't have those trained eyes to pick that up. But now there are experts here who would be able to. So at the end of all of this, do you think an investigation can occur in any meaningful way that will give families some closure on what happened? We have, I think, a critical mass now of experts here, as long as they can get to the site quickly, have pretty good access. Collect the parts of the aircraft, ship it somewhere, I think that would be a good thing. I don't think there's ever been a crash like this in these types of circumstances. This kind of open crime scene. Repatriating the bodies to the Netherlands was an emotional event for everyone. It just was a chilling experience because you feel that this kind of circle has been closed of us being in this bubble in the crash site and then sudden realization that the impact on all these families, and we knew that at least a majority of the bodies had returned, made it through all of those logistical hurdles back to the Netherlands and where they'll be, you know, cared for with dignity and return to the families. It's a long way from that one day when we're standing in front of that train and looking at the scene of body bags and, yeah, it was just something that will always stay with us.