DUTCH DEFEND HANDLING OF CRASH PROBE
Flight 17 was shot down July 17, killing all 298 people aboard — most of them Dutch. Hunks of the wreckage arrived Tuesday in the Netherlands by truck.
The government’s top security official replied Tuesday that investigators that are doing their best while facing a “complex geopolitical situation in a conflict zone.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The lull in fighting followed a proposal by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to hold a “day of silence” as a bid to revive a largely ignored cease-fire deal reached in September.
The war has left more than 4,300 people dead, displaced hundreds of thousands and exhausted a nation struggling to stave off economic collapse.
As Ukraine enters its long winter, when temperatures can drop below freezing for days if not weeks on end, combat fatigue is showing on both sides.
Separatist rebel leaders have supported the truce, which appeared to be holding around the main rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Despite a noticeable decrease in the level of shelling, the military press office said Tuesday evening there had been 13 attacks on army positions and residential areas in government-controlled settlements.
“Ukrainian troops, behaving with honor and restraint, didn’t open fire in return,” according to a statement.
Earlier, a military spokesman said attacks had been mounted in areas around Debaltseve, a town 45 miles east of Donetsk that has been the scene of some of the heaviest shelling as separatists attempt to squeeze out government forces ensconced there.
Rebel authorities said they recorded no rocket attacks by government troops, but that they were engaged with small arms fire.
Viktor Muzhenko, chief of Ukraine’s general staff, said the truce that began Tuesday was open-ended and that no end date had been set. Military authorities have indicated that the cessation of hostilities is being seen as a confidence-building exercise and that heavy weaponry could be pulled back from the front if fighting stops for several days.
Intense shelling continued right up until the eve of the cutoff period, killing four people and wounding 10 others.
Local authorities said 20 residential buildings were damaged in rebel-controlled Donetsk.
Poroshenko’s office earlier this week announced new peace talks involving Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to be held Tuesday in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
Vasiliy Vovk, head of the Ukrainian security services’ investigative department, said Monday night that the talks had been pushed back to Friday.
Ukrainian military officials said Tuesday evening, however, that they were uncertain when negotiations would take place.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov struck a conciliatory note earlier in the day, suggesting that Moscow could support the return of separatist areas into Ukraine’s fold. Lavrov told state news agency RIA-Novosti that rebels were ready “to restore a common economic, humanitarian and political space” with Ukraine.
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