{"id":134501,"date":"2014-07-31T20:49:02","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T20:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=134501"},"modified":"2014-07-31T20:49:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T20:49:45","slug":"kiev-regimes-assault-east-ukraine-blocks-access-mh17-crash-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/kiev-regimes-assault-east-ukraine-blocks-access-mh17-crash-site\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiev regime\u2019s assault on east Ukraine blocks access to MH17 crash site"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Marsden<\/em><\/p>\n

The US-backed Ukrainian government and its armed forces blocked access to the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) crash site amid heavy fighting in towns in east Ukraine targeted by the far-right US- and European-backed regime in Kiev.<\/p>\n

The military operation hit many towns in eastern Ukraine and involved an artillery strike on Horlivka that killed at least 13 civilians. In Donetsk at least three people died in shelling, and civilian casualties were also reported in Luhansk.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian troops and tanks entered the town of Shakhtarsk, 10 miles west of the site of the Boeing 777 crash, and fighting was reported in the towns of Snizhne and Torez, the mid-sized towns nearest to the crash site.<\/p>\n

There were reports of a mass exodus from Donetsk and an additional 4,600 people moving to temporary camps in Russia Sunday, pushing the total number of refugees in such camps above 31,000, including 11,000 children, and the total of all refugees in Russia to over 142,000.<\/p>\n

Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that though the Ukrainian army would \u201csoon\u201d oust pro-Russian separatist rebels from the area, investigators would still not be able to visit the site until mines that he claimed have been laid by rebels were cleared. There is no evidence whatsoever of the existence of any mines surrounding the site, however.<\/p>\n

With Ukrainian security officials claiming that they needed control over the crash site to prevent pro-Russia separatists from destroying evidence, a military cordon was placed around the area preventing investigators from reaching it. The road leading from the provincial capital, Donetsk, to the crash site northeast of Shakhtyorsk was blocked by armoured vehicles as the civilian body count started to climb.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Dutch Justice Ministry had complained that, for a third day, \u201cThe group of Dutch and Australian experts did not leave Donetsk for the crash site in east Ukraine. There is currently too much fighting on and around the road to the crash site.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underscoring that the aim of the operation was not to \u201cliberate\u201d the crash site, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0wrote Monday that, \u201creporters who visited [the crash site] earlier Sunday said insurgents were nowhere to be seen.\u201d It quoted a \u201cseparatist commander at a checkpoint outside Shakhtyorsk, about 10 miles from the crash site,\u201d who said, \u201cThe attempts to clear militia from the crash site irrefutably show Kiev is trying to destroy evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the MH17 crash site sealed off, on Monday Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott denounced the \u201cshambolic\u201d situation, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin. Turning reality on its head, he asserted, \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that at the moment the site is under the control of the Russian-backed rebels and given the almost certain culpability of the Russian-backed rebels in the downing of the aircraft having those people in control of the site is a little like leaving criminals in control of a crime scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

In effect refuting Abbott\u2019s rhetoric, that same day Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop indicated at a press briefing that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had secured access to the wreckage site in negotiations with pro-Russia rebels prior to the Ukrainian offensive.<\/p>\n

The bloody offensive of the Kiev regime, and not the movement of pro-Russian militias, is emerging as the main obstacle within Ukraine to an investigation of the crash.<\/p>\n

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called Poroshenko to ask Ukrainian forces to stop fighting near the crash site. A spokesman said, \u201cRutte expressed his concern about the fact it appeared the investigators may today yet again not reach the site. This is important because we want to get to the crash site as quickly as possible to get the victims and bring them home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Netherlands is home to most of the crash victims. As many as 71 bodies still remain unrecovered.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Tuesday, amid the usual obligatory criticisms of Russia, made clear that Russian-backed separatists had in fact been \u201cdriven from part, but not all, of the site\u201d with only \u201ca half-dozen glum-looking and exhausted gunmen hunkered down in trenches on the western edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the fighters in a roadside trench, who gave only his nickname, Trojan, said Ukrainian forces now controlled the village of Grabovo, the site of a field where the main landing gear, the wings and the rear cone of the Boeing 777-200\u2019s fuselage hit. Behind him lay a cargo pallet from the flight. \u2018The plane isn\u2019t relevant now,\u2019 he said. \u2018We\u2019re being attacked.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, the article noted that in Petropavlovka, \u201cthe overhead luggage bins from the plane\u2019s business-class section landed in a tree, along with much other debris\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Local resident Maria Nikolayeva asked, \u201cWhy isn\u2019t anybody coming here to pick up the pieces?\u201d<\/p>\n

The media is, of course, largely silent on the politically criminal offensive in east Ukraine, along with Washington, London, Berlin and Paris.<\/p>\n

The same holds true for the extraordinary delay in issuing any findings from the black boxes handed over by the rebels on July 20 and sent for investigation by an international team of experts in the UK on July 22. The BBC reported that the UK\u2019s Air Accidents Investigation Branch \u201dinvestigators are confident that, depending on the extent of the damage, they can retrieve information from the boxes within 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then there has been no official report\u2013a situation made all the more extraordinary given that prior to the handover, the media was filled with screaming headlines speculating that \u201cvital information\u201d was being either destroyed or had been shipped to Russia.<\/p>\n

Instead, on Monday Ukrainian authorities issued claims that data from the black boxes had pointed to \u201cmassive explosive decompression\u201d from missile shrapnel. Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for Ukraine\u2019s Security Council, told a news conference in Kiev that the information came from experts analysing the recorders from the plane.<\/p>\n

Though barely reported elsewhere, Dutch Safety Board (DSB) spokeswoman Sara Vernooij told\u00a0The Independent<\/em>\u00a0that Lysenko\u2019s information did not come from them,\u00a0<\/em>and that \u201cBringing out fragmented pieces of information is not on behalf of the investigation,\u201d which would not report its initial findings until August 1.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Marsden The US-backed Ukrainian government and its armed forces blocked access to the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) crash site amid heavy fighting in towns in east Ukraine targeted by the far-right US- and European-backed regime in Kiev. The military operation hit many towns in eastern Ukraine and involved an artillery strike on Horlivka […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}