The government of Moldova, where nerves are being tested by the crisis between Moscow and neighboring Ukraine, has called on Russia to withdraw its troops and weapons from Moldova's separatist region, Transdniester, according to RFE/RL's Moldovan Service. Here's more, with additional reporting by AP:
The Foreign Ministry appealed to Russia on August 5 to pull out its 1,500 troops and thousands of tons of weapons from Transdniester in accordance with commitments made at a 1999 summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Moscow on August 4 accused Moldova and Ukraine of trying to block Russia's access to its troops in Transdniester.
Transdniester broke away from Moldova in 1990 over fears it planned to reunite with Romania. Some 1,500 people died in a 1992 war.
Moscow earlier this month placed an embargo on Moldovan fruit, after Chisinau signed an association agreement in June with the European Union.
Personal belongings but no human remains found at MH17 site today. Official statement: http://t.co/C8FXieYqU5
— Simon Kruse (@crusoes) August 5, 2014
Rebels at site said they interrupted search due to security and alleged Ukr "provocation". True or not, it cut short the search, yet again.
— Simon Kruse (@crusoes) August 5, 2014
Breaking: US military sends "survey & assessment" team from Euro Command to Kiev to advise on #MH17 crash site access & investigation
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) August 5, 2014
Yanukovych long gone, but whispers of 'new Maidan' fuelled by war, sense of politics as usual. My dispatch from Kiev: http://t.co/tM4TyGicfr
— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) August 5, 2014
We are now closing the live blog for today. Don't forget that you can keep abreast of all our ongoing Ukraine coverage here.
Here's our overnight wrap-up of events in Ukraine and at the Security Council:
UN officials warned of a worsening humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine as some UN Security Council members blamed Russia for the crisis.
John Ging, the director of UN humanitarian operations, said at the council's August 5 emergency meeting on the Ukrainian situation that fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists is putting civilians at risk, especially in urban areas.
He said power and water supplies are becoming scarce because of the fighting and that more than 1,350 people -- civilians and combatants -- have been killed.
The UN refugee agency said earlier on August 5 that some 285,000 people have fled their homes to escape the fighting, an estimate they said was probably low.
Russian officials say several hundreds of thousands of people have fled to Russia during the crisis.
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the situation in the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk is "disastrous" and said Russia wants to send a humanitarian convoy to the cities to help the civilian population.
But Security Council members Britain and the United States joined Ukraine in blaming Moscow's financial and material support for the separatists as the main reason for the crisis.
Rosemary DiCarlo, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN, told the council that the best way to improve the humanitarian situation was "for Russia to stop the flow of fighters, weapons, and money from Russia into eastern Ukraine."
Ukraine's deputy ambassador to the UN, Oleksandr Pavlichenko, denied there is a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine but said the situation in Luhansk and Donetsk -- the two main cities of the separatists -- is serious.
He said the Kyiv government is capable of managing the humanitarian situation but is "open to cooperation with international partners."
Meanwhile, heavy fighting was reported overnight inside Donetsk. Ukrainian forces have effectively encircled the city, which is the headquarters for the rebels' self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic."
The separatists control less than 10 percent of the territory that makes up Ukraine's Donetsk Province, having lost large swaths of land to Ukrainian forces in the last six weeks.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they are concerned by a Russian force buildup near the Ukrainian border of some 20,000 troops.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the forces are "highly capable" and are "relatively close to the border."
Despite the fighting, 110 experts from Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Australia are continuing their search for remains from victims of the Malaysian airliner that was downed near Donetsk on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew onboard.
The investigators are also recovering personal belongings and flight wreckage in an effort to determine what caused the airliner to be brought down.
Western and Ukrainian officials have said the separatists shot it down with a missile, likely mistaking it for a Ukrainian military plane.
Separatist officials deny having anything to do with the plane's downing.
With reporting by AP, dpa, Reuters
Leonid Bershidsky via Bloomberg View on "The Vladimir Putin School Of Leadership" argues that:
The leaders of some of the biggest developing nations -- China, India, Turkey, South Africa -- are increasingly acting like Russian President Vladimir Putin. It may be that democracy as the West understands it will have to compete with a new strain of authoritarianism, much as it did with communism in Soviet times.
And the nub of it:
These are not the characteristics of a smattering of rogue regimes. This is how the world's populous nations, with all their emerging economic and geopolitical clout, are governed. The Western version of democracy had a chance to spread after communism fell in the 1990s, but it has failed to take root where the world's untapped economic potential is concentrated. The West squandered its opportunity by cynical and self-serving interference in the emerging world's affairs. It botched democracy's marketing campaign: While democratic values themselves are hard to tarnish, the politicians who put themselves forward as their champions did not live up to the task.
From Ukraine's foreign ministry following the UN Security Council debate yesterday: