Oh and in Crimea Putin also announced he has approved a Defense Ministry plan to "set up and develop" a Russian military task force in Crimea.
More legislation passed in Ukraine's parliament.
Ukraine's parliament has approved a bill to allow gas-transit facilities to be leased on a joint-venture basis with participation from EU and U.S. firms.
The measure says Ukraine will hold 51 percent and foreign partners will be offered 49 percent in the venture.
It covers both transit pipelines and underground gas-storage facilities.
The law passed by 228 votes -- two more than the minimum necessary.
Ukraine is making efforts to become less dependent on Russian gas after suffering three cutoffs of natural-gas supplies from Russia in under nine years.
At the same time, Kyiv wants to provide more reliable transit for Russian gas to the EU market.
Kyiv says the measure will bring in investment and remove the need for the South Stream pipeline, which Russia is building to take gas to southeastern Europe across the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine.
Ukraine's parliament has passed legislation that would allow the government to impose sanctions on Russia. There were some worrying provisions concerning media freedom, which Daisy Sindelar wrote about yesterday, but they were not included in the approved legislation.
The bill was approved in a final reading on August 14.
It provides for sanctions against 172 individuals and 65 entities in Russia and other countries for supporting and financing of separatism in Ukraine, though actual sanctions would need approval from Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.
A total of 244 lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada supported the sanctions.
A version of the bill passed on first reading on August 12 included provisions allowing the censoring of media deemed a national security threat. Those provisions were removed from the final version of the bill.
Rights groups had said the law would give the council "draconian" powers to restrict media and could return a nation once celebrated for media freedoms to Soviet-era levels of censorship.
Brief wrap of Putin's Crimea comments:
President Vladimir Putin says Russia will do its utmost to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, where government forces are fighting pro-Russian separatists in the east.
Putin was speaking at a meeting with Russian lawmakers in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March.
He also said that Russia must not "fence itself off from the outside world" but will not allow anyone to treat it with contempt.
He said Russians need to "consolidate and mobilize but not for war or any kind of confrontation."
Western nations have imposed a raft of sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and its perceived support for the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Russia denies it is supplying the separatists with weapons and expertise.
The two-day visit to Crimea is Putin's second to the Black Sea peninsula since its annexation.
BREAKING: Russian President Vladmir Putin, speaking in Yalta, said Moscow will do its utmost to stop bloodshed in Ukraine and that the situation in Ukraine's southeast is becoming more dramatic with each passing day.
Our news desk has wrapped together everything we know about the convoy:
A Russian aid convoy has resumed its travel toward Ukraine, with at least part of the convoy heading south toward the rebel-held Luhansk region.
Russian officials have not said where the convoy of nearly 300 trucks is headed. Russia initially said the convoy would cross into the government-controlled Kharkiv region.
Reports on August 14 said the convoy was now in Russia's southern Rostov region, neighboring Luhansk.
Moscow has dismissed claims the convoy is a pretext to send military aid to the separatists fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said it was sending its own aid convoys to the east, with dozens of trucks leaving Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv for a government-held town near Luhansk on August 14.
Local officials said Luhansk came under shelling on August 14, causing civilian casualties.
Lots of these going about. Here's a Transformers one.
With Strelkov's fate uncertain, things just got even more complicated for the separatists:
The leader of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk region says he is stepping down, the second senior separatist figure to resign in a week.
Valery Bolotov said on August 14 that he was suspending his work as leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, citing a wound that he said was hampering his efforts in the job.
He said the rebel "defense minister," Ihor Plotnitsky, would be asked to take his place.
Bolotov's announcement came seven days after Aleksander Borodai, the leader of separatists in the neighboring Donetsk region, said he was resigning his post as prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
It also followed conflicting statements by separatists on August 13 about the status of the military chief of the Donetsk separatists, Igor Strelkov, who some reports said had been wounded.