That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Saturday, October 1. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
Australian FM: MH17 suspects to be known in months and prosecuted:
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says the people responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine two years ago could be known by the end of 2016 and will be prosecuted.
Bishop told Australia's ABC TV on October 2 that "by the end of the year, maybe early next year, the list of those that we believe should be held accountable will be confirmed and then there must be a prosecution."
International investigators said in a report on September 28 that the plane with 298 people on board was downed by a Russian-made missile fired from territory in Ukraine's Donbas region that is controlled by Russia-backed separatists.
Although most of the victims were Dutch, there were also 28 Australians who perished in the crash.
Moscow has questioned the investigators' findings and called them "preliminary," countering earlier that Ukraine's military shot down the plane.
Bishop said the findings counter Moscow's suggestion that the flight, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014, was brought down by Ukraine's military rather than the separatists.
Bishop said Russian theories on how the plane was downed were "improbable, implausible."
She said if Russia vetoed a UN-backed prosecution of the suspects than a "Lockerbie-style prosecution" was possible, a reference to a tribunal set up to try suspects in the 1988 bombing of a PanAm flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. (AAP, Reuters)
Ukrainian army, separatists withdraw from flashpoint town:
The Ukrainian military and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have announced a pullback from a frontline city as agreed upon in a demilitarization deal agreed to last month.
Ukrainian military spokesman Valentyn Shevchenko said on October 1 that both sides had moved their forces several kilometers away from the town of Zolote, recently the scene of fierce fighting.
Shevchenko added that some members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observer mission in Ukraine's Donbas region had "confirmed the retreat."
Mikhail Filimonenko, a separatist representative, said that "not a single soldier remains at the positions which they previously occupied, conforming to what is required by the Minsk peace accord."
Representatives of the Ukrainian government and the separatists had reached an agreement in Minsk in September to withdraw all heavy weapons and fighters from Zolote, Stanytsya Luhanska, and the Donetsk region town of Petrovske.
No withdrawal was reported in the other two towns.
The pullback should create a 2-kilometer perimeter around the three frontline towns.
It would be first progress registered in months toward the Minsk peace process.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine started shortly after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.
At least 9,600 people have been killed in the fighting. (AFP, Interfax)
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (click to enlarge):
