Donetsk journalist Viktoria Ishchenko reports that her parents have been seized by members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Iryna and Valery Ishchenko are accusd of “complicity”, though complicity in what is not clear.

Anna Mokrousova explains that if before people were seized to dig trenches for the militants or to try to get information, now they’re being taken hostage in huge numbers for possible exchange.

Militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic are preventing people from fleeing the fighting into Ukraine, leaving only the road towards the Russian border open, They are also deliberately causing huge queues in order to create the impression that people are fleeing in their masses to Russia

The funeral has taken place of four members, two deacons and the sons of the Pastor of he Slovyansk evangelical Church of the Transformation tortured and killed by Kremlin-backed militants from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Since Russian pro-Kremlin media are already suggesting that Ukraine brought down the Malaysian airliner, the following is a reminder of the first, damning, reports which came from the Kremlin-backed militants and Russian TV LifeNews

Faced with the murder by Kremlin-backed militants of four members of a Slovyansk evangelical church, Russia’s state-owned ‘Voice of Russia’ radio could have stayed silent. It opted for a far more cynical approach. Against all evidence, it reports that the men were murdered by the Ukrainian army for helping ‘insurgents’.

A Polish Roman Catholic priest from Horlivka, Father Viktor Wąsowicz has been taken hostage by the Kremlin-backed militants whom certain EU leaders are joining Russia in insisting that Ukraine holds peace negotiations with.

150 children from two school orphanages have become hostages to the Kremlin-backed militants and are again in danger of being taken, against their will, to Russia.

Father Tkhon has been released and is in a safe place after being held by militants from the so-called ‘Russian Orthodox Army’. According to Pastor Sergey Kosyak Father Tikhon is in a very bad state both physically and mentally

A priest from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, Yury Ivanov was abducted on July 8, and Father Tikhon remains a hostage of the so-called ‘Russian Orthodox Army’

The latest explosion occurred at around 13.00 on July 7 near Novobakhmutovka, damaging the railway bridge over the road from Slovyansk through Donetsk to Mariupol

Bohdan Lysenko, a freelance journalist from Zhytomir has been taken hostage. According to Telekritika’s sources who refused to give their names out of considerations for the journalist’s safety, Lysenko was at a training base of the Russian battalion “Vostok”.

LB.ua has posted a list of hostages thankfully now free after the Kremlin-backed militants who had been controlling Slovyansk fled on July 5.

There are serious grounds for concern that Father Tikhon who is also secretary of the inter-faith Council of Churches and Religious Organizations of the Donetsk Oblast and one of the organizers of the prayer ‘marathon’ in Donetsk may have been seized by Kremlin-backed militants

Alexander Chernov, an OstroV freelance journalist, blogger and anaesthetist taken hostage by Kremlin-backed militants has been accused of failing to provide medical assistance to a woman militant in what his colleagues believe to be an act of reprisal

Amid the ‘Dirty War’ in Ukraine, Hundreds Have Disappeared – and a Few Volunteers Search for Them

Nastya [Anastasia] Stanko and cameraman Illya Bezkorovainy were released ‘live’ on Russian TV LifeNews on Wednesday evening. Their refusal to speak with Russian journalists can easily be understood seeing a previous LifeNews ‘report’ on their seizure by Kremlin-backed militants

A Forbes Russia journalist who was close by when Russian TV 1, or Pervy Kanal, correspondent Anatoly Klyan was killed on Sunday evening, has suggested the real role assigned journalists on that fatal trip. They were taken there to come under fire.

Anastasia Stanko and Illya Bezkorovainy are being held in one of the buildings seized by the Kremlin-backed terrorists who claim that they were ‘spying for the army’

At least one piece of good news at a very dark time. The reports earlier in the day that Volodymyr Semytyaha, head of the Prosvita cultural society, had died after being tortured by the Kremlin-backed militants were hopefully incorrect.