According to our news desk, the bodies in Kharkiv should start arriving in the Netherlands by tomorrow:
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says the first bodies from the Malaysian airliner downed in eastern Ukraine will be flown to the Netherlands on July 23.
Ukrainian and Western officials say there is mounting evidence that the plane was shot down by pro-Russian separatists on July 17.
Of the 298 people killed in the disaster, 193 were Dutch.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine say more than 200 bodies were brought on July 22 from rebel-controlled territory to Kharkiv -- which is controlled by the government.
The Netherlands will be in charge of identifying the victims, which Rutte said could take months.
He added that, at Ukraine's request, the Netherlands would lead an investigation into the cause of the crash.
Meanwhile, the OSCE said its observer mission in Ukraine -- which expires in September -- will be extended by six months.
(Reuters, AFP)
"Our banks facilitate Putin's criminal regime. They steal it; we fence it." @OliverBullough in hard-hitting WSJ op-ed http://t.co/7YtLmE92zs
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) July 22, 2014
Here's some more on that Shaktar Donetsk story from our news desk:
Six South American soccer players have refused to return to their club in the troubled Ukrainian city of Donetsk, citing security risks.
The players remained in France following a game by their club, Shaktar Donetsk, against Lyon yesterday in France.
Shakhtar is scheduled to play against Dynamo Kyiv tomorrow in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
Shakhtar's billionaire owner, Rinat Akhmetov, has warned that the club will take legal action against the players if they don't return to Ukraine.
Akhmetov said breaching their contracts could cost the players "tens of millions of euros."
The missing players are Douglas Costa, Alex Teixeira, Ismaily, Fred, and Dentinho from Brazil, and Argentina's Facundo Ferreira.
Costa said online that the players "all run a deadly risk if we are in the region."
Donetsk is mainly controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
(AP, AFP, and Reuters)
An emotional speech by the Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans at the UN Security Council Meeting on Ukraine yesterday.
This is very big if confirmed.
Here's the latest map commissioned by the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council's Information-Analytical Center of the fighting in the east. (It's in Ukrainian, since the center no longer publishes its English-language versions.)
From our news desk:
British Prime Minister David Cameron said at the request of the Dutch government Britain will retrieve data from the black boxes of the downed Malaysian airliner.
Cameron said on July 22 his government had received and agreed to the request from the Dutch to have British air accident investigators at Farnborough get the data from the black boxes of the Malaysian plane shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17.
Belgium's Defense Ministry said in a statement a Belgian military aircraft was on its way to Kyiv to collect the boxes.
Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine handed over the black boxes to Malaysian experts early on July 22.
The two boxes may shed light on Western claims the plane was shot down by separatists in eastern Ukraine with a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile.
Here's the related tweet: