More from our news desk on the soldiers killed in the eastern Ukraine today:
Ukraine says three of its servicemen have been killed and 13 wounded in clashes in the country’s east.
Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on July 5 that government forces suffered losses in the previous 24 hours across various parts of the 500-kilometre frontline splitting the separatist-held areas from the rest of Ukraine.
Lysenko said the worst fighting centered on the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and the southeastern government-controlled city of Mariupol.
Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 9,300 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Under a cease-fire agreement reached last year in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, both sides pledged to pull back heavy weaponry as well as take other steps toward a peace settlement.
That ends the live blogging for today.
Main story so far today:
Representatives of the Joint International Criminal Investigation Team have arrived in Moscow to discuss their probe into the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine two years ago.
Team spokesman Wim de Bruin told TASS on July 5 that the delegation of investigators, prosecutors, and police will stay in Moscow for two days to discuss the downing of the Boeing 777, which investigators have said was shot down by a Russian-made Buk missile, killing all 298 people on board.
He did not disclose who he would meet with and said he would not make any statements on the Moscow visit. Interfax reported that the team would meet with representatives from Russia's defense sector.
The investigative team includes experts from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine and is led by the Dutch National Prosecutor's Office. Their main task is to establish who is to blame for the crash.
Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
Latest from our news desk:
NATO, Russian Ambassadors To Hold Talks Next Week
NATO says it will hold fresh talks with Russia next week, days after a major NATO summit in Poland where Moscow’s actions in Eastern Europe will be a major topic of discussion.
"We have decided together with Russia to hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement on July 6.
Stoltenberg said the meeting will take place on July 13 at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, shortly after the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9.
The meeting will involve ambassadors from the 28 member states and Russia.
Stoltenberg said the council "has an important role to play as a forum for dialogue and information exchange, to reduce tensions and to increase predictability."
The NATO-Russia Council held in April its first meeting since June 2014.
Relations between NATO and Russia have reached their lowest point since the Cold War over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its role in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Barring any major developments, that ends the live blogging for today.