The Australian and Dutch air crash investigators made a dramatic switch in their plans early on Friday - instead of dispatching 60 of their number to the MH17 site, they packed their bags and left town.
In a sensible response to the near impossible logistics of a site visit by just two of them - more than 11 hours on the road, with all the insecurity of a war zone for just 85 minutes on the ground - they were bussed to a small town, Soledar, about 95 kilometres north of the crash site.
Spending just 85 minutes at the site on Thursday was an emotional salve to the investigators' frustration at not being able to get there all week. But it also underscored the near impossibility of the investigators being able to work in a war zone. Canberra and the other capitals involved in this tragedy should be working on shaming Kiev into reinstating, and observing, the 40 kilometre combat exclusion zone it initially proposed around the site.
Moving house reduced the size of the Australian Federal Police team that was dispatched to the crash site on Friday. On Thursday, team leader Commander Brian McDonald suggested that as many as 60 might attend on Friday, but an initial morning foray included 38. The Dutch were hopeful of sending similar numbers.
A further complication was an announcement by the Russian government aviation agency that it would send a team of experts to Ukraine, to do its own investigation. Moscow is accused of being an accomplice to the shooting down of MH17 to the extent that it provided the missile system and, possibly, trained the rebels how to use it.
On Friday, Ukrainian media reported that 20 government paratroopers had been killed by mortar and tank fire from rebels near Shakhtarsk.
Heavy fighting on Thursday around the 50 square-kilometre site - and across it before and after the Australian investigators' visit - revealed a 24-hour hour-ceasefire announced by Kiev to be a mirage - both sides hammered each other throughout the day. Kiev and the Russian-backed separatists accused each other of ignoring a ceasefire that was announced as a gesture to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who demanded that fighting stop around the crash site.
As Fairfax Media observed the site from high ground in the coalmining village of Kirovskyoe, north-west of the site, at least seven separate battles threw up billowing smoke and dust. Some of the firefights set ablaze the fields from which the remains of the passengers and crew - 38 of them from Australia - are yet to be recovered.
While the convoy was out, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop revealed that a Dutch assessment of the contents of what became known as the ''train of death'', which moved victims' bodies out of the crash area, had concluded that as many as 80 bodies still had to be recovered from the site.
Still in Kiev, she tweeted optimistically: ''At last work begins to bring our people home.''
On his return from the site to Donetsk on Thursday, Commander McDonald set out his objective for Friday: ''To get out there, to get on site and spend as much time as we possibly can, maximise the time on the task and get the job done. It's a complex situation out there and we just need to make sure we're making the most of our time.
''We had a quick inspection of the site. Today was more about an assessment of the site than a search.''
His colleague Commander Mark Harrison said: ''We were fortunate to have both the Dutch and Australian forensic experts with us … we were able to make an assessment of the best way to take the search and recovery aspects of that forward over the next days and week.''
Asked if he was confident the team could achieve its objective, Commander McDonald said: ''It's given me confidence that there is work to be done at the site, we need to spend [more] time at the site, we need to recover items and give the best for the families that have really suffered through this.
''We've got about I think 200 men in country. We can only use so many at the site so we have to manage that as we go along. That will be managed on a daily basis, obviously try to get as many on scene, as many as we can.''
The local chief of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Alexander Hug, said that the three-vehicle convoy arrived on site just before 2pm which was two weeks, almost to the hour, since what was believed to be a rebel-fired missile forced the crash of the Malaysia Airways Boeing 777.
Mr Hug spoke of the deal under which the convoy travelled as the outcome of local negotiations, which were quite separate from the ''day of quiet'' announced in Kiev - ''the ceasefire was there for our presence and as soon as we left the site, the incentive [to stop fighting] disappeared.''
OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw confirmed that after observing a brief memorial silence on arriving, the experts ''went deep'' into the site - and they did encounter human remains. ''They now have a better sense of the time and investigative infrastructure they'll need - like cadaver dogs,'' he said.
In the wake of claims by officials in Kiev that the rebels had placed landmines on the site, there were reports that locals had warned reporters that a road had been mined. But Mr Bociurkiw said: ''We had no verification of land mines - we asked questions about risks and the rebels said 'no', and they accompanied us.''
Villagers said that Ukrainian army columns, one numbering 146 tanks, APCs and other machines, moved in from the north at dawn and were attempting to push the rebels south and west.
At times the rebels seemed in disarray. A bus shrouded in bed sheets painted with red crosses raced towards Shakhtarsk, where a rebel sniper, who gave his name as ''Angel'', said 30 or 40 people had been killed or wounded in fighting overnight on Wednesday.
Locals at Zhdanivka queued down the road for petrol. Men on scooters held jerry cans between their legs, but were rationed to 10 litres each. Rebel fighters and their vehicles are allowed to jump the queue.
Streets and fields were deserted. Harvesting had ground to a halt as all stayed indoors to avoid the fighting.
A truck driver evacuated children from the village near where MH17's cockpit landed, yelling as he passed, ''everything is on fire!''
Another motorist slowed, yelling through the open window of his battered vehicle: ''We've got to get the hell out of here.''
In the face of seeming advances by Ukrainian forces, it still had not dawned on some villagers that perhaps they no longer lived in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic.
''No one has come to see. Yesterday we lived peacefully in the Donetsk People's Republic,'' one local said.
''We think we're still in the republic,'' said another as he sipped a beer at a cafe in Orlova-Ivanivka.
