As Russia's economy falters:
Former Pussy Rioter @tolokno (Nadya Tolokonnikova). "Try to explain to Americans or Europeans why closing McDonald's upsets you. They'll look at you like a lowlife :-)"
This Moscow-based Twitter account (@shaveddinov in Russian) is taking the McDonald's closures seriously, listing the various local providers for McDonald's food. Here's one tweet that says "most of the buns for McDonald's in Russia are made by the East Balt bakery in Moscow."
This one quips: "When they came for Jean-Jacques I was silent, when they came for McDonald's..."
The Russian food-safety inspection agency says the surprise spot-checks of McDonald's restaurants will continue in the Krasnodar region, Reuters flashed, citing RIA Novosti. So that's Moscow, Sverdlovsk, and now Krasnodar.
Our Russian Service has a report (in Russian) on the planned resettlement today of around 1,000 Ukrainian refugees from temporary shelter in Crimea to more permanent accommodations in Russia, which annexed Crimea in March. There are around 7,000 such refugees on the peninsula, the report says, with hundreds more fleeing the fighting in eastern Ukraine every day.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says "as of [the] evening of August 20, 2014 Ukrainian border and customs services did not start clearance procedures yet" on any of the Russian trucks in the stalled aid convoy. Some of those trucks were reported to have moved into the border zone yesterday.
Here's the rest of the Foreign Ministry's statement:
Ukrainian side will proceed with no delay with border and customs clearance as soon as it gets definitive confirmation by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about its readiness to deliver the humanitarian aid to its destination. In particular, the ICRC who bears responsibility on all logistic aspects, including transportation, storage and distribution of the aid on the territory of Ukraine, is expected to get security guarantees for personnel and cargo. Such guarantees for the ICRC should be provided, first of all, by the terrorists groups controlled by Russia, as well as by Russia itself.
We proceed from necessity of synchronizing by the ICRC of all humanitarian aid supplies for civilian population of Luhansk region, including those provided by Ukrainian side in cooperation with other states and international institutions.
Ukrainian military blogger Dmitry Tymchuk says this morning there is continued fighting in Donetsk, Luhansk, Ilovaysk, and a "tense" situation at Saur-Mohyla, in the Donetsk region. He also reports "continued shelling of ATO [anti-terrorist operations] forces, including from Russia," citing nine mortar or artillery strikes from Russian territory.