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Spiegel Online
It took the shooting down of a Boeing jet carrying almost 300 people before the EU agreed on the first true economic sanctions against Russia. The Americans want further action, but it is impossible to know if punitive measures can sway Vladimir Putin.It was the images. Absurdly tattooed pro-Russian fighters, cigarettes dangling from their lips and Kalashnikovs tucked under their arms, stomping around in the field of bodies and wreckage at the crash site, as if the dead children from the downed Boeing had nothing to do with them. Experts holding their noses as they opened a railroad car full of dead bodies. A seemingly endless convoy of hearses leaving Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands. And Russian President Vladimir Putin took it all in without losing his composure.
It's usually the images.
DW
Dutch and Australian police called off an attempt to reach the wreckage of MH17 on Monday due to reports of explosions in the region, the second time they have been forced to turn back due to clashes near the site of the crash.Initially, the Netherlands and Australia had contemplated sending an armed mission to secure the wreckage of the Malaysian airliner and retrieve human remains that have not yet been recovered. But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called off the idea of an armed mission after a ceasefire negotiated with the rebels around the crash site fell through.
"We had the intention to send a unit of the air mobile brigade which was very lightly armed, so it's not a real unit which would provoke hostilities," Kees Homan, a retired major general with the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps, told DW.
"But as the fighting continued in the area, our prime minister then took the decision that a military unit for protection of the investigators was not a real option," said Homan, who now works with the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.
Prime Minister Rutte had concluded that "there's a real risk of such an international military mission becoming directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine."
Al Jazeera
Data from recovered flight recorders shows that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine because of an explosive loss of pressure after being punctured multiple times by shrapnel, a Ukrainian security spokesman says.Andrei Lysenko said on Monday the plane suffered "massive explosive decompression" after it was hit by fragments he said came from a missile.
The data recorders were sent to experts in Britain for examination.
The data was released as heavy fighting flared around the debris field, once again preventing an international police team charged with securing the site from even getting there.
Government troops stepped up their push to win back territory from pro-Russian separatists in fighting that the United Nations said on Monday had killed more than 1,100 people in four months.
The international delegation of Australian and Dutch police and forensic experts stopped on Monday in Shakhtarsk, a town around 30km from the fields where the Boeing 777 was brought down.
The unarmed police team's mandate is to secure the currently rebel-controlled area so that comprehensive investigations can begin and any remaining bodies can be recovered.
NPR
The U.S. State Department has released satellite images it says back up the assertion by Washington and Kiev that Russian forces are firing artillery into eastern Ukraine in support of separatists.In a four-page document titled Evidence of Russian Shelling into Ukraine, released Sunday, blast marks from rocket launches in Russia and craters in Ukraine can be seen, the State Department says.
The document also shows "self-propelled artillery only found in Russian military units, on the Russian side of the border, oriented in the direction of a Ukrainian military unit within Ukraine."
It also states that: "Russia-backed separatists have used heavy artillery, provided by Russia, in attacks on Ukrainian forces from inside Ukraine."
The images are attributed to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and were taken between July 21 and July 26, officials say — days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
According to The Associated Press, they "claim to show multiple rocket launchers fired at Ukrainian forces from within Ukraine and from Russian soil. One image shows dozens of craters around a Ukrainian military unit and rockets that can travel more than 7 miles."
The Guardian
The Obama administration in Washington has accused Russia of conducting missile tests in violation of a 1987 nuclear treaty, calling the breach "a very serious matter" and bringing into the public sphere allegations that have simmered for some time.The treaty confrontation comes at a highly strained time between the US president and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, over Russia's intervention in Ukraine and granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, who exposed widespread surveillance and collection of innocent people's data by US intelligence agencies.
An administration official said Obama had notified Putin of the US objections in a letter Monday. The finding is to be included in a US state department annual report on compliance with arms control treaties due for release on Tuesday.
The US is accusing Russia tested a new ground-launched cruise missile, breaking the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that Ronald Reagan signed with Mikhail Gorbachev during the Soviet era.
"This is a very serious matter which we have attempted to address with Russia for some time now," an administration official said in a statement.
"We encourage Russia to return to compliance with its obligations under the treaty and to eliminate any prohibited items in a verifiable manner."
Another official said the US was prepared to hold high-level discussions on the issue immediately.