The EU on Monday denounced an arson attack on armoured vehicles belonging to OSCE observers monitoring a fragile ceasefire in rebel-held eastern Ukraine.
OSCE observers based in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine said that four of their vehicles were destroyed in an apparent arson attack at their hotel.
Minister Counsellor of the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Russia Yerlan Baizhanov informed that international observers from various countries and organisations had been invited to Kazakhstan for the early presidential elections.
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Basel evening for a meeting of top diplomats from some 50 OSCE countries which will focus on the spiralling Ukraine crisis.
Russia's Lukoil said it had reached preliminary agreement to sell its network of filling stations in Ukraine, days after radical nationalists there tried to extort fuel from the company.
The EU is set to approve punishing sanctions against Russia Tuesday over its role in the Ukraine crisis, after Kiev seized control of part of the MH17 crash site in fighting that blocked an international effort to recover victims' remains.
Japan announced it would impose additional sanctions against those responsible for the "annexation of Crimea and destabilisation of eastern Ukraine", without offering further details.
Pro-Russian militiamen in Ukraine loaded almost 200 bodies from downed flight MH17 into refrigerated train wagons on Sunday as an outraged United States pointed the finger of blame directly at Moscow and demanded it ensure full access to the crash site for international investigators.
Four OSCE observers who were abducted on May 26 by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have been freed and have arrived at a hotel in Donetsk, a separatist leader said.
The United States warned it would not accept any use of Russian troops in Ukraine as it confirmed that Moscow had redeployed "significant" military forces near the border.