Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – August 1, 2014

The Dutch justice ministry said that a team of 70 international experts got to work recovering bodies at the crash site of flight MH17 in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Alexander Proselkov, deputy foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, was shot and killed while accompanying a motorcade carrying humanitarian cargo.
(Interfax Ukraine) Ukrainian troops freed the urban village of Nov Svit in the Donetsk region.
(Interfax Ukraine) Ten Ukrainian paratroopers were killed, 13 were wounded, and 11 went missing in the fighting near the town of Shakhtarsk, Donetsk region.
(ITAR-TASS) The OSCE announced that another meeting of the international contact group on the peaceful settlement of the crisis in eastern Ukrain, involving representatives from the militias, will be held next week.
(Interfax Ukraine) The contact group at a meeting in Minsk agreed to release 20 persons captured in clashes in the Donbas.
(ITAR-TASS) The city of Luhansk was left without water or electricity in a 30-degree heat as the Ukrainian army continued its security operation. The conflict-torn east Ukrainian city of Luhansk was on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe, the city council press service said.
(Interfax Ukraine) The police head in the town of Dokuchayevsk, Donetsk region and his driver were killed.

Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said that the Ukrainian military should be prosecuted for war crimes against civilians.
Russian combat aircraft and helicopters illegally crossed Ukraine's border several times on July 31-August 1, flying up to 10-15 kilometers deep into Ukraine, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council information and analytical center spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.
(Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian government ordered the State Fiscal Service to make lists of companies with Russian capital operating in Ukraine to study the possibility of imposing sanctions on them.
(RIA Novosti) Russian Envoy to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said that unlike the United States, Moscow is directly interested in settling the Ukrainian crisis.
(RIA Novosti) Chizhov said that Moscow is not breaking diplomatic cooperation with Ukraine, but Kyiv’s tone leaves much to be desired.
(RIA Novosti) Chizov also said that the European Union has demonstrated the first signs of thinking over an “exit strategy” from the current anti-Russian sanctions. He stated that the EU’s sanctions against Russia are “shooting” and will not help stabilize the Ukrainian crisis.
(ITAR-TASS) The EU sanctions on oil equipment are not critical, an official of Russia’s major oil company Rosneft said.

Annie Cowan