I have no doubt Putin DID NOT directly order that MH17 be shot down and that the shooting was caused by someone in the rogue separatist group, however, I could be wrong.
With that said, I have great doubt ANYTHING of consequence will be done UNLESS there is a direct and definite connection to the actual shooter.
In 1988 the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, entered Iranian territorial waters and spotted an aircraft that it thought was an Iranian F-14 fighter plane. However, it was actually a civilian Iran Air Airbus A300, flying over Iran’s territorial waters on its regular route from Tehran to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The Vincennes fired a surface-to-air missile that destroyed the plane, killing all 290 onboard. Under a 1996 agreement at the International Court of Justice, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran $61.8 million.