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Australian Prime Minister Marks ‘Improvement’ at MH17 Crash Site in Ukraine

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Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott said there have been some signs of improvement at the Malaysian jet crash site in eastern Ukraine, including Kiev officials gaining access to the site.

MOSCOW, July 21 (RIA Novosti) – Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott said there have been some signs of improvement at the Malaysian jet crash site in eastern Ukraine, including Kiev officials gaining access to the site.

“There has been some improvement. It does seem that Ukrainian government officials are now being allowed some access to the site. But there’s still a hell of a long way to go before anyone could be satisfied with the way that site is currently being treated,” Abbott said in an interview with 2GB radio station.

“We’ve got a team of officials, including police, in Kiev. They are waiting to go to the site and we are doing what we can to make that safe and secure so that these things can happen,” he said.

On Sunday, Abbott held a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. While refusing to go into detail about the discussion, Abbott admitted that the Russian leader said "all the right things."

"Now he has to be as good as his word and I will be speaking regularly to the Russian president to do my best to hold him to his word," the Australian prime minister said.

Abbott has called to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Alexander Borodai said Sunday independence supporters discovered objects resembling the flight data recorders which have been taken to Donetsk.

Independence supporters plan to transfer the flight data recorders to experts from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and refuse to give them to Kiev fearing that results of the investigation may be falsified.

Thirty-six Australian citizens and residents are known to have been among those 298 people killed in the tragedy. Most of the people aboard the flight were Dutch, but there were also victims from many other nations, including Malaysia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and Philippines.

The Malaysia Airlines plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 near the town of Torez in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region. Kiev has accused independence supporters of downing the Malaysian airliner. Self-defense militia members insist that they have no required technology to shoot a target at altitude of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).

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