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jakeXT

(10,575 posts)
Sun Jul 27, 2014, 04:07 PM Jul 2014

International team cancels visit to MH17 crash site amid fighting

Source: AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa

International police on Sunday announced the cancelation of a scheduled to trip the site in eastern Ukraine where Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed. Safety concerns had prompted the decision, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

"The situation on the ground appears to be unsafe ... we therefore decided to deploy tomorrow morning…if the situation changes," OSCE deputy head Alexander Hug told reporters.

"We can't take the risk," Hug said, adding that conditions at the site were "unacceptable for our unarmed observer mission."

The Netherlands, Australia and Malaysia are working together to deploy observers to the area where they will be tasked with the securing the site and recovering victims' remains and aircraft wreckage.

Read more: http://www.dw.de/international-team-cancels-visit-to-mh17-crash-site-amid-fighting/a-17811595

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International team cancels visit to MH17 crash site amid fighting (Original Post) jakeXT Jul 2014 OP
If they cannot get to the site due to war then this needs to be treated as an act of war and those jwirr Jul 2014 #1
The liberators, I doubt it ? jakeXT Jul 2014 #2
I was talking about the investigators not being able to reach the site - said nothing about any jwirr Jul 2014 #4
The ceasefire wasn't going to work. Igel Jul 2014 #3

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
1. If they cannot get to the site due to war then this needs to be treated as an act of war and those
Sun Jul 27, 2014, 04:22 PM
Jul 2014

responsible be held responsible for a war crime.

jakeXT

(10,575 posts)
2. The liberators, I doubt it ?
Sun Jul 27, 2014, 05:21 PM
Jul 2014
"All our troops are aiming to get there and liberate this territory so that we can guarantee that international experts can carry out a 100 percent investigation of the site and get all proof needed to deduce the real reason for this tragedy," said Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's Security Council, said, according to news agency Reuters.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
4. I was talking about the investigators not being able to reach the site - said nothing about any
Sun Jul 27, 2014, 05:48 PM
Jul 2014

liberators.

Igel

(35,191 posts)
3. The ceasefire wasn't going to work.
Sun Jul 27, 2014, 05:47 PM
Jul 2014

Simply because pretty much the entirety of the DPR and much of the LPR would have been within the originally suggested 40-km ceasefire zone. At the time the DPR was within easy striking distance of the Russian border. This would have allowed the DPR rebels to restock, regroup, and continue to launch attacks *out* of the ceasefire zone. Their big push is to start creating "partisan" and "diversionary" groups. Such groups don't respect ceasefires and would relish a nice, safe fall-back base and training/coordination center.

Lavrov and Putin called for the ceasefire zone to be the entirety of the theatre. Which would have allowed the entirety of the LPR rebels the same breathing space. Reports are that overnight the rebels got something on the order of 20 more tanks, 20 more APCs and armored fighting vehicles, and 30 truckloads of fighters and munitions/small arms. That's just overnight. Take a week off from fighting and you're looking easily at 100+ tanks, 100+ fighting vehicles, and many hundreds of additional fighters. Perhaps you'd like your relatives in the US army to face something like that ... entirely unnecessarily, mind you, just to make some grieving civilians happy. Take off three weeks and it's even worse.

The result would have been happy relatives of the DH17 people. And some happy Russian and rebel politicians. And enough dead soldiers and civilians to fill 20 MH17s because the fighting would have had to be even more fierce, more widespread, and last longer than is otherwise likely. Misery loves company.

This is about the closest you're going to get to a map of the "front lines" based on media reports, government reports, reading the rebel reports with a bit of common sense, and on some social media information. It seems fairly reasonable if you take the absoluteness of the red lines with a grain of salt. They're a bit porous and blurred, and I think they overstate the amount of territory reliably under the Ukr forces command, but they're the best I've seen for a couple of days. Official maps from the Ukr military come out infrequently and are always a day stale when they're released.

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For the last couple of days the Ukr forces have been pushing in from the north, and today they pretty much managed to cut Donets'k and adjacent off from the rest of the rebel-held territory (nearly along the "border" between the two rebel governments) and, most importantly, cut it off from its supply lines or nearly so. A few places inside the lines are contested, a few places outside the lines are contested. What's not evident is that the fiercest fighting has been to keep the LPR in touch with the Russian border and incredibly fierce attempts in the last week to get the DPR (the western lump in red) into contact with the Russian border. They allowed their northern flank to collapse to ensure they could be resupplied from Russia. (Now, think: Could somebody put 20 tanks through the Nogales border crossing with Mexico and nobody notice? If that happened repeatedly, would somebody reasonably assume Obama bore some responsibility? Esp if the tanks and munitions came not just from S. Arizona but from California, Georgia, and Illinois?)

If you look at that corridor between the red-outlined areas you'll see a indentation pushing east. The stated aim of the Ukr army is to take the area to the east of that indentation. That's where Hrabove is and where the wreckage of DH17 is. There's nothing of any real strategic importance right there right now--if the lines change, perhaps it'll become important. But for now it's pointless and the main fighting will be south of that indentation where there's a city and north. Go a few miles further in and you hit Krasnyi Luch and a highway, but the road isn't very useful right now. The intersection maybe 5-10 miles from Hrabove might be useful, but the rebels should entrench there. That's Krasnyi Luch and it's seen absolutely no fighting.

The area to the north of Hrabove, that rebel wedge thrusting N-NW is a series of towns--Alchevsk, Bryansk, Stakhanov, Pervomaisk are the main ones. They've come under heavy assault in the last 36 hours and that's likely to continue. The main fighting in the area is going to be up there, around the two large cities in the extreme NE and SW of the red areas, and along the border because that's where the rebels get their money, men, and munition. Borodai, the DPR leader, said this might not last another two weeks. He said that before the big push in the last couple of days and the tentative dividing of their territory. Bezler, the top commander in one part of the left surrounded area, has vanished.

Even as the DPR and LPR front lines take heavy damage, Lavrov is calling ever more insistently on a ceasefire. (When the rebels advance, the Russians have nothing to say; when the front lines are stable, they have all kinds of requirements; when their guys are losing, they want a ceasefire; and now that the rebels' lines collapsed in the north, appear to be having problems in the south, and aren't doing so hot in the NE, the pitch of the demands for an immediate ceasefire is reaching a fever pitch. As is the wanton destruction of infrastructure--power stations knocked out by rebels, train bridges downed by explosives even if they aren't used by the Ukr military, coal mines flooded, an oil refinery torched, airports mercilessly shelled, even a dam or two blown up.)

The rebels have done a crappy job protecting the area. If you read the western press you'll see that the tail section was hacked into, the cockpit cut open, numerous bits missing. Reports are that some of the duraluminum alloy has been sold off. A crane moved some of the larger pieces. Some of the experts have complained--muted complaints, because for all the negotiations with Ukraine about having Australian police and soldiers, Dutch police, Malaysian police protect the area, they'll have to have the same negotiations with the rebels, who've said much about "access" but have also told a lot of experts "don't touch." And the rebels love all the high-level negotiations because it gives them legitimacy. If you read the *Russian* press the offical DPR word is that the rebels have held the territory and that nothing's been touched or moved without permission from experts and no personal belongings have been taken. And that the Russians have, today, put together their own investigatory committee, if they're requested to assist by either the international experts doing the examination or the government. The DPR specifically requested a week ago that the Russians send their investigators. The DPR pitched a fit when the black boxes were given to the Netherlands and the Dutch asked the British do the lab work, even under ICAO supervision. They're NATO. We'll see if the Russian investigators show up first, are invited to join out of "courtesy," or are given the cold shoulder. Since they said nobody on either side should be involved in the investigation, they by their own demands should be shut out.

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