More from our news desk on Obama and Putin's call.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spoken by phone about Washington's tough new sanctions against Moscow because of Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Putin had expressed deep disappointment to Obama over what he described as "another unconstructive decision" by Washington to introduce so-called sectoral sanctions against Russia.
The Kremlin added that Putin and Obama also mentioned the breaking news of the Malaysian airliner crash in Ukraine.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest did not give details about the presidents' conversation, but said the call took place at the Kremlin's request.
Obama announced on July 16 that the United States was imposing sanctions against two major Russian energy companies, two powerful financial institutions, some weapon-makers, and four Russians because of Moscow's support for separatists in Ukraine.
On the day the sanctions were announced, Putin said Washington was making a "mistake."
A few days ago, the Donetsk People's Republic Twitter account tweeted a photo of a "Buk" missile launcher:
Doubts emerging about Strelkov's VKontake page:
This is where it crashed:
There is going to be much, much more of this type of thing in the days to come.
Going back a few years, but Ukraine did admit that its military shot down a Russian airliner by mistake in 2001.
Here is the latest recap from our news desk:
A Malaysian passenger plane has crashed in eastern Ukraine where government forces are fighting pro-Russian separatists, amid claims the aircraft was shot down.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did not exclude the plane may have been shot down, but said the Ukrainian armed forces "did not take any action against any targets" in the area where the aircraft came down on June 17.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has ordered an investigation.
A Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser, Anton Herashchenko, earlier claimed the plane had been shot down by a BUK ground-to-air missile and killed all of the nearly 300 people on board.
He said the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters when it was hit. It was on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Debris and burning wreckage from the plane was spread over several kilometers and body parts could be seen by people on the ground in the Shakhtarsk district of the Donetsk region.
The self-styled prime minister of the self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic," Aleksandr Borodai, claimed the Ukrainian air force shot down the plane.
Borodai said the separatists do not have weapons that could shoot down a plane flying at such a high altitude.
Shortly before reports surfaced that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 had crashed in eastern Ukraine, a separatist leader boasted on social media that his men had shot down an aircraft.
In a post on his VKontakte page, Russia's largest social-media site, separatist leader Igor Girkin, aka Strelkov, wrote that the separatists had downed an AN-26 transport plane used by the Ukrainian Army.
He said the plane came down near a town some 40 kilometers east of Donetsk. Included in the post were two videos that showed a rising plume of black smoke in the distance.
Earlier on June 17, Kyiv accused Russia's military of shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet, but Russia rejected the claim as "absurd."
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said on Twitter there's no confirmation that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 from Amsterdam was shot down.
The Malaysian government said it was launching an immediate investigation.
From our news desk:
Several international airlines announced their planes will avoid flying over Ukraine after a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane came down in the east of the country where government forces are fighting pro-Russian separatists.
Ukraine's military and the separatists have blamed each other for shooting down the plane.
Germany's Lufthansa, Russia's Aeroflot, and Turkish Airlines were among the major airlines saying they will divert their flights
The French government advised French airline companies to also avoid Ukrainian airspace.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was urgently returning to the Netherlands from an EU summit in Brussels to deal with the crisis.
The Malaysian airliner, which had 295 people onboard, had been on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Agency had told U.S. airliners in April to avoid flying over eastern Ukraine.