KHARKIV, Ukraine -- An international push to secure the crash site of a Malaysian passenger jet shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine stalled Saturday, with the leader of a Dutch forensic mission announcing that scores of foreign police officers and experts gathered at a luxury hotel here would not start moving toward the site for at least five days.
Jan Tuinder, the head of a Dutch mission comprising 40 unarmed military police officers and about 20 forensic specialists, said the delay was needed to give the Ukrainian parliament time to vote Thursday to provide a "legal basis" for the deployment of foreign police officers on Ukrainian territory.
Efforts to reach the crash site had previously been hindered by heavily armed pro-Russia rebels, who control the area, but now another obstacle appears to be Ukraine, whose military has been gaining ground against the rebels and is wary of halting its offensive.
The jet, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, crashed in territory in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia rebels July 17, and while most of the bodies of the 298 victims of Flight 17 have now been recovered and flown to the Netherlands for identification, forensic investigators have not been able to reach the area in sufficient numbers to conduct a full examination of the plane's debris and determine what and who brought it down.
Ukrainian and U.S. officials say it was shot down by a Russian-made, surface-to-air missile fired by the rebels. Russia and the rebels have denied any involvement and blame Ukraine.
A team of seven Dutch forensic experts who tried to reach the crash site early Saturday gave up after running into fighting along the main road from Kharkiv to Donetsk, the capital of the rebels' self-proclaimed republic. A separate group of four Dutch experts managed to reach the crash site Friday but, after heavy fighting broke out overnight in Donetsk, planned to pull out.
Officials from the Netherlands and other countries that lost citizens on the Malaysian jet had previously made no mention of any vote by parliament and instead blamed the rebels for stalling access to the site. On Saturday morning, Dutch police officers assembled in Kharkiv said they expected to leave for the crash area in the next day or so.
But Volodymyr Groysman, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister leading Ukraine's response to the crash, said at a news conference in Kiev, the capital, on Friday that parliament needed to endorse the deployment of foreign investigators in Ukraine and that he hoped that this could happen" this week.
The delay could help reduce growing pressure on Ukraine to agree to a swift cease-fire with rebel fighters so that foreign investigators can travel to the crash site on a road heading south from Kharkiv, which runs through an area that saw heavy fighting Saturday.
Twenty Dutch forensic experts had planned to travel to the crash site with the military police Saturday but have put off their journey. Australia, which lost dozens of citizens in the plane crash, is sending 100 members of its federal police force, some of them armed, as well as members of its military to Kharkiv to join the hunt for any remaining bodies and evidence from Flight 17, Australian news media reported.
The Netherlands, whose citizens accounted for around two-thirds of the crash victims, is leading an international effort to get to the bottom of what happened to Flight 17.
Its own on-the-ground investigation stymied for the moment, the Dutch National Police appealed for videos and photographs taken at the crash site and set up a special website for the submission of video and images.
Malaysia's prime minister, Najib Razak, will fly to the Netherlands on Wednesday for talks with Prime Minister Mark Rutte about gaining better access to the disaster site and identifying the dead, Najib's office said in an email Saturday. At least 30 more investigators are needed to cover the site, far beyond the seven or so there now, his office said.
"Unfortunately, events on the ground -- including ongoing fighting between Ukrainian and separatist forces -- prevent such a large contingent of investigators being deployed," the email said.
But the parents of one crash victim were able to cross the territory held by pro-Russia rebels. Jerzy Dyczynski and Angela Rudhart-Dyczynski, parents of 25-year-old Fatima, traveled from their home in Perth, Australia, to honor their daughter at the wreckage-strewn fields outside the village of Hrabove, where they sat together on part of the debris, his arm around her shoulder.
Fatima "was for peace. She will be forever for peace," her father said.
rebels hold main road
Reaching the crash site, a rural area dotted with wheat and sunflower fields east of Donetsk, has always been problematic, but it became even more difficult after fighting flared Saturday around Horlivka, a town on the main road into Donetsk that is still controlled by the rebels.
Ukrainian national security spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Ukrainian forces have advanced to the outskirts of the town.
Once they can take Horlivka, "the direct route is open for the forces of the anti-terrorist operation to the capital of the Donbass region -- the city of Donetsk," Lysenko said. "The approaches to Donetsk are being blocked so that the terrorists do not get the chance to receive ammunition, reinforcements or equipment."
Lysenko called Horlivka the last major rebel redoubt on the road to Donetsk, and that the military continued to gain momentum in its campaign to regain control of the Donets Basin region, or Donbass.
Despite his assertions, the rebels seemed to be largely in control of roads closest to the city.
Lysenko accused Russia of continuing to violate Ukrainian airspace by deploying surveillance drones, and repeated an allegation that rebels were using information from the drones to more precisely target Ukrainian military positions. He said that heavy fighting continued along the border with Russia. In the previous 24 hours, he said, four Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 20 wounded.
In Donetsk, the smoldering ruins of several homes hit by artillery shells, downed power lines looping across the streets, and blown-off tree branches scattered about the sidewalks in an outlying district testified to the Ukrainian army's approach.
The shells struck several vacant homes overnight, residents said. By afternoon, black smoke rose from the positions occupied by the Ukrainian army at the city's airport and by rebels at an abandoned mine several miles away.
For now, there was no sign of a ground attack into the city, where the neighborhoods are fortified with separatist foxholes and trenches in parks and the green space of traffic circles, in preparation for urban warfare, if the army presses further.
bearish on sanctions
In Moscow, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued two statements Saturday, criticizing the Europeans for sanctioning some of Russia's top security officials and blaming Washington for the continued fighting in Ukraine.
"The additional sanctions list is direct evidence that the countries of the EU are determined to completely scale back cooperation with Russia on issues of global and regional security," the statement said.
The decision surely will be greeted "with enthusiasm by global terrorists," the statement said, noting that the issues affected include terrorism, organized crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The EU sanctions, announced Friday, impose travel bans and asset freezes on 15 additional Russians and Ukrainians, including the director of Russia's main security service, the FSB, and the head of the country's foreign intelligence service, along with top figures in the breakaway republics of southeastern Ukraine. The measures also apply to 18 additional organizations, including nine companies in Crimea that were nationalized by Moscow.
The second statement came in response to accusations by the White House and other U.S. officials that Russia was supplying even more weapons to the separatists in southeastern Ukraine and again blaming President Vladimir Putin as being ultimately responsible for the downing of the Malaysian airliner.
Also Saturday, Putin spoke to the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, and the two men agreed on the need to implement the United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire around the crash site to ensure the "unhampered work of international experts in the catastrophe area," according to a brief statement on the Kremlin website.
In the U.S., the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies are developing plans that could to provide specific locations of surface-to-air missiles controlled by separatists in Ukraine so the Ukrainian government could target them for destruction, American officials said.
But the proposal has not yet been debated in the White House, a senior administration official said. It is unclear whether President Barack Obama, who has already approved limited intelligence sharing with Ukraine, will agree to give more precise information about potential military targets.
Already, the question of what kind of intelligence support to give the Ukrainian government has become part of a larger debate within the administration about how big a role Washington should take in trying to stop Russia's rapid delivery of powerful weapons to eastern Ukraine.
At the core of the debate, said several officials -- who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy deliberations are still in progress -- is whether the U.S. goal should be simply to shore up a Ukrainian government reeling from the separatist attacks, or to send a stern message to Putin by aggressively helping Ukraine target the missiles Russia has provided.
The Obama administration is already sharing with the Ukrainians satellite photographs and other evidence of the movement of troops and equipment along the Ukrainian-Russian border. But a senior administration official acknowledged late Friday that the data were not timely enough to use in carrying out airstrikes or other direct attacks.
Plans to share more precise targeting information with Ukraine have the strong backing of senior Pentagon officials and would fit broadly into Obama's emerging national security doctrine of supporting allied and partner nations in defending their territory without direct U.S. military involvement, the officials said.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Higgins, Andrew E. Kramer, David M. Herszenhorn, Neil MacFarquhar, Chris Buckley, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times and by Ayse Wieting, David McHugh, Jim Heintz, Nicolas Gallariga and Lucian Kim of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/27/2014