Dutch forensic experts have identified a total of 127 victims of downed flight MH17, with 20 new names being released to families on Thursday, the Dutch national broadcaster said.

"Of the 20, some 15 were Dutch. The nationalities of the rest of the victims were not released," the NOS said on its website.

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine suffered dramatic setbacks Thursday as top military chiefs quit and Ukraine's forces pummeled their strongholds, cutting off a major center from the Russian border.

Kiev's advance came as a massive Russian "humanitarian" convoy parked up close to the frontier, with doubts still swirling over whether the trucks would be allowed to cross.

Ukraine's parliament on Thursday approved a law paving the way for a string of sanctions on Russian businesses and nationals accused of backing a separatist uprising in the east of the country.

Kiev has drawn up a sanctions list of 65 mainly Russian companies and 172 individuals and the new law now gives Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council -- headed by the president -- the right to impose the punitive measures.

Malaysia said Thursday that the remains of 16 victims aboard downed Flight MH17 will repatriated on August 22, declaring it a day of national mourning.

Coffins bearing the remains will arrive on a special flight and be received by the country's king, prime minister and other dignitaries to a minute of silence at Kuala Lumpur's main international airport, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said in a statement.

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia should not "fence itself off from the outside world" despite a plunge in East-West relations over the pro-Kremlin insurgency in Ukraine.

Putin added during a visit to Crimea -- seized by Russia from Ukraine in March -- that an ongoing trade war with the United States and Europe did not mean Moscow "should break ties with partners. But we should also not let them treat us with disdain."

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed concern on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin's ambition went "beyond Ukraine," where he is accused of stoking a bloody rebellion by pro-Kremlin separatists.

Ukraine's wing of the Russian Orthodox Church elected a pro-Russian conservative as its new leader Wednesday, as Kiev appealed for the church to help unite the country being torn apart by a pro-Moscow insurgency.

Metropolitan Onufriy, 69, the former head of the church in Chernivtsi and Bukovyna in southwest Ukraine, succeeds Metropolitan Volodymyr, who died last month.

A massive Russian aid convoy rumbled towards Ukraine's border on Wednesday as Kiev vowed to block what it feared could be a "Trojan horse" bringing military assistance to pro-Kremlin rebels fighting a bloody insurgency in the east.

Russian television images showed a line of nearly 300 lorries moving through the countryside, covered with white tarpaulin and stretching over almost three kilometers (two miles).

The number of people killed in conflict-hit eastern Ukraine has nearly doubled in two weeks to 2,086, including at least 20 children, the U.N. human rights agency said Wednesday.

The toll, as of August 10, compared with 1,129 deaths counted on July 26 and should be considered "very conservative", the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

Western sanctions against Russia will not affect the country's multi-billion dollar weapons sales, the state-owned arms export company said Wednesday.