According to yesterday's map of the military situation in the east, Debaltseve looks likely to be cut off:
Mourners gathered in the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk on September 3 to commemorate soldiers of the Dnipro volunteer battalion who were killed in August battling pro-Russian separatists in Ilovaysk, a town near Donetsk in the country's east. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
After a week of intense fighting, Ukraine's National Guard ceded the village of Novosvitlivka, near Luhansk, to pro-Russian separatist forces. Video shot on Septermber 3 by RFE/RL correspondent Andrei Babitsky shows remains of Ukrainian armored vehicles scattered around the village and a school destroyed by artillery fire. (RFE/RL's Moldova Service)
Would NATO go to war over a cyberattack?
LATEST: NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said ahead of a NATO summit in Wales that "Russia is attacking Ukraine" and continuing to destabilize the situation in the eastern Ukraine despite a cease-fire plan proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
More on Rasmussen's description of the Ukraine conflict:
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said ahead of a NATO summit in Wales that “Russia is attacking Ukraine” and continuing to destabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine despite a cease-fire plan proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Rasmussen said what matters in Ukraine is not Russia’s words, but its actions on the ground.
He said leaders at the summit would take steps to counter threats the crisis poses to member states, including adopting a “readiness action plan” to rotate alliance troops through military bases in some of NATO’s easternmost states.
He said NATO leaders would meet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on September 4 and “adopt a joint declaration that outlines concrete steps” that enhance cooperation with Ukraine, which is not an alliance member.
Rasmussen also said NATO allies would seriously consider any request for help from the Iraqi government for help against Islamic State militants.
Investigators to release a preliminary report on the Malaysia Airlines crash in July on Tuesday, AP reports:
Dutch authorities investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine say they will publish a preliminary report next Tuesday into the disaster that killed all 298 people on board.
The Dutch Safety Board said in a statement Thursday the report "will present factual information based on sources available" to its investigators.
Those sources include satellite imagery, radar details and data from the plane's "black box" recorders. Dutch investigators have not visited the site in conflict-ravaged Ukraine where wreckage of the plane plunged to the ground on July 17.
The jet was shot down while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over an area of Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatists.
Tuesday's report will set out what investigators believe happened, but will not apportion blame.