Ukrainian military

The mystery surrounding the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 may have been resolved. After a two-year criminal probe, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has compliled an interim report which indicates that flight MH17 that crashed in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 was shot down by a Russian Buk missile.

The European Union (UN) is expected to extend on Wednesday the sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian individuals and companies by six months.

The assets of 150 people and 37 companies will remain frozen and they will continue to be subject of travel bans until March 2016, when the sanctions will be reviewed again, EUobserver informs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande called for a complete ceasefire in eastern Ukraine beginning on September 1 due to the start of the school year.

Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on July 29 that sought to set up a special tribunal to try those responsible for shooting down flight MH17 over Ukraine.

A long-awaited ceasefire seems to have taken hold at last in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian military reported it suffered no combat casualties in the past 24 hours - for the first time in several weeks. Only one soldier had been injured.

Kyiv accused pro-Russian rebels of opening fire with rockets and artillery at villages in southeastern Ukraine on Monday, all but burying a week-old European-brokered ceasefire deal.
   
The Ukrainian military said it could not pull weapons from the front as required under the tenuous truce, as long as its troops were still under attack.
   

Fighting raged around a key railway hub in eastern Ukraine on Monday despite a ceasefire agreement that officially went into force a day earlier.

A ceasefire beginning on Sunday is mostly being observed, media outlets report.

Though several incidents have been reported, pro-Russia rebels acting in the regions around Donetsk and Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, say they do not constitute a severe violation to the agreement.

The United States and its European allies remain committed to finding a diplomatic solution to tensions with Russia over the crisis in Ukraine, US President Barack Obama said on Monday.

The United States would violate a number of international agreements if it started supplying weapons to the Ukrainian military at the request of the government in Kiev, Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Monday.