From our newsroom:
The presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus are meeting in Kazakhstan today and discussions will include Ukraine.
The meeting in Astana was originally scheduled for March 12 and 13, but Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled out at the last minute, sparking rumors, denied by the Kremlin, over his health.
His cancellation also came with Putin strangely absent from the public spotlight.
According to TASS, Putin, Belarus President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev will discuss prospects for greater economic cooperation, the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, among other issues, including the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Putin's return on March 16 coincided with the start of a week of Russian celebrations marking the one year anniversary of Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Based on reporting by TASS and Reuters
We are now closing the live blog for today. Until we resume tomorrow, you can keep up with all our ongoing news coverage of Ukraine here.
Sergei Lavrov has been responding to claims by a Dutch TV station that Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile last July:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for an "unbiased and transparent" investigation into Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine last July.
His comments quoted by the TASS news agency on March 19 came hours after it was reported that a Dutch broadcaster claimed a metal fragment from the crash site matches a surface-to-air Buk rocket.
That would seem to support a theory that the plane was downed by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
All 298 passengers and crew were killed in the tragedy.
Dutch broadcaster RTL said it had had the shrapnel tested by international forensic experts who said it matched the explosive charge of a Buk, a Russian-made antiaircraft missile system.
The fragment was recovered by a Dutch journalist from the village of Hrabove several months ago near the site where the plane was brought down last July.
The Reuters news agency was among the first Western agencies to report the RTL claim.
According to TASS, Lavrov said the "the reports published by Reuters are a sort of 'injection of information,'" apparently referring to the agency's report on the RTL claim.
Russia has argued that the airplane was downed by the Ukrainian military.
TASS quoted Lavrov as saying that the Reuters report had cited "some witnesses" saying flight MH17 had been shot down by pro-Russian rebels.
The Reuters report only focused on the RTL claim relating to the shrapnel fragment.
In reaction to the Dutch TV claims, the Dutch Safety Board -- which is investigating the cause of the crash -- said that its investigation was in "full progress and focuses on many more sources than only the shrapnel."
In preliminary conclusions published last year, the board said the plane had been hit by high velocity projectiles but did not specify the source.
"Additional investigation material is welcome, but it is imperative that it can be indisputably shown that there is a relationship between the material and the downed aircraft," it said in a statement on March 19.
(TASS, Reuters)