According to RT, reporting on a Ukrainian press service, Petroshenko promised, in a phone call with the prime ministers of Australia and the Netherland, that he would declare a unilateral ceasefire for a crash site zone with a 20 km radius (about 24 square miles). RT reported no date for the cease-fire to begin, but that Petroshenko said on the phone that Kiev "is making every effort possible to accelerate the international experts' access of to the crash site."
On July 30, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced that its observers had begun working at border crossings between Ukraine and Russia. The same day, forensic investigators again failed to reach the crash site because fighting continued in the area. According to the Canadian CTV News:
Even the rebels -- who initially oversaw the collection of more than 200 of the 298 bodies in a disorganized, widely criticized effort -- have stopped their work, saying attacks from the Ukrainian military have forced them to focus on defending themselves".
Recent offensives by the Ukrainian army have enabled it to take back swaths of territory from the rebels. But the fighting has edged ever closer to the crash zone.
The Ukrainian government is accusing the rebels of planting landmines around the crash site. The Ukrainians and the Russians continue to accuse each other of shelling each other's territory
Whatever the U.S. is doing isn't having noticeable effect
As for the United States, if there's nothing useful the U.S. can do, then it's succeeding admirably. Summing up what seems to be the official American attitude, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, recently said, "Putin can end this with one phone call."
That assumes the crisis is all Putin's fault. That assumes Putin has operational control over enough of the Ukraine rebels to make a difference. That assumes that both Ukraine and the U.S. would take "Yes" for an answer.
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