russian-backed separatists on the state department s terror list. steve harrigan, live for us in ukraine with the very latest. steve. reporter: grectchegretchen, small signs of progress today after several days of malaise and agony. the prime minister saying he s reached a deal with the russian-backed rebels. he could receive the two flight data recorders some time in the next hour. also a train under rebel controlled territory, train refrigerated that holds about 200 bodies, passengers killed, when that plane went down, has already started to move outside of rebel controlled territory. rebels gave it permission to leave. it is heading towards ukrainian controlled territory. the next step will likely be loading those 200 bodies on to planes, flying them to the netherlands. that s where dna analysis and identification will begin. really the first step in returning those remains to their loved ones. finally here on the ground in the city of donetsk, rebels and ukrainian force
i agree with that. the people they re covering it. it is a normal human reaction. you have to understand you try to balance things, you try to put in the facts that really matter but at the same time you can t stand before a mother who has lost two of her young children who regrets that they ever went out to play football on the beach seeing them, you know, blown into pieces. in this kind of a situation it s very difficult not to have empathy, not to have a human the human emotion, that is part of the story and, unfortunately, both sides try to dehumanize the other s and that s what reporters have to do, bring the humanity back and becomes an you know all too well, every word a reporter utters is every scrutinized by all sides. and one example from the washington post headline on the front page. two israeli soldiers killed in
all because they say they want to leave it untouched for a future investigation. we know that s not true because we ve seen them in the debris field. we ve seen them moving things. so the truth lies in there somewhere. but it s still not clear, jim. and i spoke to ukrainian officials who accuse not just the rebels of trying to engineer a cover-up but also the russian government. i want to ask where you are now, phil and what s behind you? is that part of the cockpit? is that part of the area where maybe those black boxes might have been or might still be? reporter: it is or was, i should say the cockpit. it is now a twisted hulk of metal. the damages to it is really quite extraordinary standing in the middle of a sunflower field. all around us very tall, very beautiful sunflowers and then just this patch of flattened earth here where this chunk of the plane literally must have simply fallen from the sky. we ve seen some emergency workers in here today cutting in to the electronics,
train cars at a place near the site. it is still being controlled by pro-russian rebels and negotiations over the handling of the victims bodies are still happening right now. our own phil black joins us live again now from the crash site. phil, so many questions today. the first about the handling of those bodies. it took days, 24, 48 hours before they were even taken from the field. now they re being removed but to be clear for our viewers they re being removed by pro-russian rebels. s that s right. still negotiations about where they go from there? reporter: well, they re being moved to another area that is still very much in the control of pro-russian rebel, jim. it appear has that recovery effort, to get the victims bodies out of the ukrainian sung, out of the wreckage, out of the fields from where they have been lying for several case where we ve seen them, that effort is being led by ukrainian emergency service workers. these are people who answer to the central government i
join us later in the hour. he s talking to sara firth, russian television reporter who resigned over how her network is covering the deadly crash in ukraine saying, quote, we re lying every single day and finding sexier ways to do it. we ll get her take on what vladimir putin should do as anger grows over his handling of the downed plane. but first a new potentially critical piece of evidence in the crash of malaysia airlines flight 17. just this morning ukraine s security service release what had they say is an intercepted phone call between two pro-russian rebels in ukraine just following the crash and in this recording which cnn cannot authenticate an alleged rebel commander is heard telling a rebel fighter to find the plane s black boxes quickly because is very interested in them. have a listen to this. [ speaking a foreign language ]