Due to Russian election coverage, we're closing the live blog early today. See you again tomorrow.

Good morning. We'll get the live blog rolling this week with a couple of items that were filed overnight by our desk in Washington:

Dutch Prosecutors Did Question MH17 'Person of Interest' Tsemakh In Ukraine

Dutch prosecutors questioned Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 “person of interest” Volodymyr Tsemakh before he left for Moscow as part of a Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange on September 7, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok told his country’s parliament in a statement the same day.

"Up until" the prisoner exchange during which Kyiv and Moscow each swapped 35 prisoners, Dutch prosecutors "had done everything possible through judicial channels to keep Tsemakh available for the [MH17 Joint Investigative Team] investigation," Blok told the Dutch parliament.

In response, Kyiv had promised to postpone the exchange for some time in order to give Dutch prosecutors an opportunity to question Tsemakh, and "this has happened," Blok said.

He didn't say for how long or what information, if any, was divulged during the interrogation of Tsemakh, who reportedly oversaw an air-defense unit among Russia-backed separatists in a town near where MH17 was shot down with what Dutch-led investigators have concluded was a Russian-made Buk missile system in July 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters at Kyiv’s Boryspil Airport the same news after greeting the 35 freed Ukrainian prisoners, according to the Interfax news agency.

Zelenskiy said he did everything possible to ensure Tsemakh would be questioned by the Dutch and that the process "was complicated…I was scared that the [prisoner] exchange would fall apart because of that."

All 298 people on board MH17 were killed flying over territory held by Russia-backed separatists en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lampur.

Three Russians and a Ukrainian were indicted over the downing of MH17, and court proceedings in the Netherlands are scheduled for March. But the four suspects are most likely to be tried in absentia.

Russia called the charges against its citizens "absolutely unfounded" and said the investigators had based their findings on "dubious sources of information," accusing them of rejecting evidence that the Kremlin had provided. Moscow has also aired its own theories on the shoot-down but never provided solid evidence.

Tsemakh, a Ukrainian citizen, is not one of the four indicted.

In an exclusive interview with Interfax on September 7, Ukraine's security service (SBU) chief Ivan Bakanov said the exclusion of Tsemakh on the prisoner exchange list would have led to "the cessation of negotiations with Russia."

The degree to which Moscow was allegedly adamant on getting Tsemakh was "yet another confirmation of Russia's involvement in the shoot-down of MH17," Bakanov said.

The Russian Embassy in the Netherlands said its diplomatic mission hadn’t received any extradition requests from Dutch authorities, according to a social media statement on September 7.

The SBU apprehended Tsemakh on June 27 in the Donetsk region in the city of Snizhne, which is held by Moscow-backed separatists and is 20 kilometers from the Russian border.

According to the Dutch-led investigation, the Buk missile was fired six kilometers south of Snizhne.

TV footage obtained by Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, showed Tsemakh claiming that he was in charge of an antiaircraft unit and that he helped hide the missile system in July 2014.

He also shows the interviewer where the civilian airliner fell.

With reporting by Intefax, Censor.net, Dutch News, and Nos.nl

Macron, Putin Discuss Ukraine Conflict Before Their Defense, Foreign Ministers Meet

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron about the armed conflict in eastern Ukrainian and Iranian nuclear deal on September 8, according to the Kremlin's website.

Their phone conversation came a day before a meeting between the Russian and French foreign and defense ministers in Moscow, where they are expected to discuss developments in the Persian Gulf, including Iran, the situation in Ukraine, and Central African Republic, according to the TASS news agency.

Talks will be "candid” on many topics, French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly told TASS ahead of the meeting.

"There are many geo-strategic challenges, on which France and Russia have shared interests," she said. "Of course, we disagree with each other on some issues, but this is what prompts us to strengthen dialogue. We want to foster a candid and demanding dialogue on all these issues showing openness and also putting forward our conditions.”

Parly is scheduled to meet with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu while French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Le Drian told French television before his departure that it "was too soon" to lift sanctions on Russia that the European Union has imposed for taking over Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The discussion between Macron and Putin also came a day after Russia and Ukraine each exchanged 35 prisoners in what both sides said they hoped would lead to a "normalization of relations" between Moscow and Kyiv.

Macron "positively assessed the prisoner swap," according to the statement.

Meanwhile, Putin said that any future four-way talks between Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany -- known as the Normandy format -- "should be thoroughly prepared” in advance to find peace in the conflict.

The Donbas conflict started in April 2014 when Kremlin-backed separatists started taking over government buildings and wrested control over parts of Ukraine’s easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

More than 13,000 people have been killed in the war, according to the UN, and some 1.5 million have been internally displaced, the largest internal migration of people on the European continent since World War II.

Kyiv accuses Moscow of stoking the conflict by leading, supplying, training and fighting beside the separatists, allegations that Russia denies, calling it a "civil war."

The last Normandy talks took place in Berlin in 2016.

Macron and Putin also "thoroughly examined" the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord that offered sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran placing curbs on its nuclear program.

Tehran has scaled back on its nuclear commitments since the United States, one of five signatories to the accord including Russia and France, withdrew from the deal last year and reimposed sanctions.

With reporting by TASS and dpa

Here's another story from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. It's not really related to the crisis, but is bound to be of general interest to Ukraine-watchers:

Six Die In Storm Off Crimea's Southern Coast

At least six people were killed in a violent storm that struck the southern coast of Russian-annexed Crimea on September 8, the Russian Emergencies Ministry reported on the Ukrainian peninsula.

One dead person was taken out of the water in Vidradniy, while two others could not be retrieved due to severe storm conditions with gusts of wind reaching 22 meters per second.

Two more dead people couldn't be reached near the Swallow’s Nest castle while a deceased man was recovered in Massandra where a famous winery is located.

Authorities said it was a five-point storm and earlier said that four people died in the general area known as Big Yalta.

A storm warning is in effect through September 9.

Based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service