DEVELOPMENTS
— Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his resignation, part of a pre-negotiated plan to hold early elections this fall and complete the transformation of the government that began with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February.
— The Dutch Safety Board said investigators in England successfully downloaded data from the plane’s flight data recorder. It said “no evidence or indications of manipulation of the recorder was found.”
— Ukrainian forces are closing in on Donetsk, where insurgents have regrouped after recent losses, and are trying to cut off supply routes to rebels based in the neighboring Luhansk region.
News services
The Obama administration on Thursday accused Russia of firing artillery from its territory into Ukraine to hit Ukrainian military sites and asserted that Moscow is boosting its supply of weaponry to pro-Russian separatists.
“We have new evidence that the Russians intend to deliver heavier and more powerful multiple rocket launchers to separatist forces in Ukraine and have evidence that Russia is firing artillery from within Russian to attack Ukrainian military positions,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
She said the evidence derived from “human intelligence information” but declined to elaborate.
The allegations come amid an increasingly bitter war of words between Washington and Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine and conflicting claims over the downing of a Malaysian passenger jet over eastern Ukraine last week.
The U.S. has repeatedly accused Russia of stoking the Ukraine rebellion and has said it believes separatists shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 with a Russian-provided surface-to-air missile.
Russia on Thursday brushed off the accusations. Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in a video statement that if the U.S. officials indeed had the proof the plane shot down by a missile launched from rebel-held territory, “how come they have not been made public?”
The crash killed 298 people, most of them Dutch citizens. Two more military aircraft carrying remains of victims arrived in the Netherlands on Thursday.
Australian and Dutch diplomats are promoting a plan for a U.N. team to secure the crash site, where armed rebels have hindered access by investigators.
Human remains continue to be found a full week after the plane went down — underlining concerns about the chaotic recovery effort at the sprawling site spread across farmland in eastern Ukraine.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who said he feared some remains would never be recovered unless security is tightened, has proposed a multinational force mounted by countries such as Australia, the Netherlands and Malaysia that lost citizens in the disaster.
Abbott said Thursday he had dispatched 50 police officers to London to be ready to join any organization that may be formed.
On Monday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution proposed by Australia demanding that rebels cooperate with an independent investigation and allow all remaining bodies to be recovered.
The first remains arrived in the Netherlands on Wednesday and were met by Dutch King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and hundreds of relatives. The two planes Thursday brought a total of 74 more coffins back to the Netherlands, said government spokesman Lodewijk Hekking.
Patricia Zorko, head of the National Police Unit that includes the Dutch national forensic team, said some 200 experts, including 80 from overseas, were working in Hilversum at a military barracks on the outskirts of the central city of Hilversum to identify the dead.
Zorko warned that the process of identification could be drawn out.
“Unfortunately this type of investigation often takes time,” she said. “Count on weeks and maybe even months.”
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