Mogherini promises 'united' EU response to Russia over MH17

European expected to announce new round of sanctions

(ANSA) - Rome, July 21 - The European Union will give a "united" response to the crisis in Ukraine, which has deteriorated after a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down in territory held by pro-Russia rebels last week killing 298 people, Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said Monday. Mogherini is set to chair her first meeting of EU foreign ministers on Tuesday, after Italy took over the duty presidency of the union this month, with response to the disaster at the top of the agenda. "I think that the response will be coordinated, united and strong," Mogherini said.

Britain, Germany and France agreed on Sunday that a fresh round of sanctions should be imposed on Russia, with the US and other allies suspecting Moscow supplied the rebels with the weapons used to shoot down flight MH17 on Thursday. Russia has denied involvement.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday ordered a unilateral cease-fire in a 40-km radius around the crash site so that international investigators could get to work, Russian news Interfax reported. At the same time, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told his country's Lower House that Russia must also guarantee access to the site. "If in the coming days access to the disaster area remains inadequate, then all political, economic and financial options are on the table against those who are directly or indirectly responsible for that," he said. Meanwhile, world leaders condemned the pro-Russia separatists' handling of the site and the victims' bodies, with German foreign ministry spokesperson Martin Schaefer calling it "intolerable" and "beyond description" and United States Secretary of State John Kerry calling it "grotesque".

The bodies were left to decompose amidst the wreckage, then piled onto trucks by allegedly drunken separatists, who also allegedly let dozens of journalists troop through the crash site, trampling potential evidence. Also on Monday, US President Barack Obama told Russia to compel the separatists to cooperate with the investigation and threatened Moscow with steeper sanctions if it does not. "The burden now is on Russia to insist that the separatists stop tampering with the evidence, grant investigators who are already on the ground immediate, full and unimpeded access to the crash site," Obama said. "If Russia continues to violate Ukraine's sovereignty and to back these separatists, and these separatists become more and more dangerous and now are risks not simply to the people inside of Ukraine, but the broader international community, then Russia will only further isolate itself from the international community and the costs for Russia's behavior will only continue to increase."