From AFP:
Pro-Russia rebels violating Donetsk airport truce: Ukraine
From AFP on the cease-fire around the Donetsk airport:
Bursts of exploding shells echoed across the Ukrainian rebel-held city of Donetsk on Wednesday but a ceasefire at the disputed airport appeared to be holding one day into a tenuous local truce.
An AFP reporter said the calm was shattered just before noon by the sound of several Grad missiles that appeared to have been fired from rebel-held positions.
"We heard the shelling but we are not afraid -- we are used to it by now," said Oleksandr, 54, a resident of a partially-destroyed building next to Donetsk airport.
Local authorities reported no casualties and a pro-Russian rebel commander on the ground denied any involvement in the latest firing.
"Our side respected the ceasefire," the rebel told AFP without giving his name.
The latest truce in the nearly eight-month war went into effect late Tuesday after a round of negotiations between the visiting deputy head of Russia's ground forces and a senior Ukrainian general.
Donetsk rebel leaders signed up to the agreement at a separate meeting.
Another ceasefire for the entire neighbouring pro-Russian region of Lugansk is due to go into effect on Friday.
The two deals are meant to reinforce a comprehensive ceasefire signed by all sides on September 5 that was supposed to establish a 30-kilometre (18-mile) buffer zone and grant limited self-rule to the separatists.
But hostilities only intensified after the two rebel regions held their own leadership polls on November 2 that were denounced by both Kiev and the West.
Pro-Russian militias had been attacking the Donetsk hub -- once eastern Ukraine's most modern and busiest airport -- since May in order to prevent Kiev from using it to funnel soldiers and supplies into the war zone.
The structure and its landing strip have been devastated by constant shelling and no planes will be able to land there without a complete overhaul of facilities.
Truce agreements have been broken on repeated occasions with both rebel and government forces unable to control hardline fighters who reject the compromises of their leaders.
But Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko -- a pro-Western leader elected in May on a vow to quickly reunite his country -- has faced growing criticism over the human and financial cost of the war.
Battles between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have killed more than 4,300 people and displaced 930,000 since mid-April.
More from Brussels by AFP:
The European Union released 500 million euros in loans to Ukraine on Wednesday, the latest portion of a 1.6 billion ($2 billion) aid programme launched in March to rescue an almost bankrupt Kiev government.
The expected payout comes a day after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko unveiled a new government tasked with pushing through anti-corruption reforms, a key condition of the EU's loan programme.
From AFP on that nuclear "accident" in southeastern Ukraine:
Ukraine said Wednesday there was "no threat" from an electrical fault at a nuclear power plant last week and that it would would be fixed by Friday.
The short-circuit at the Zaporozhye plant in the southeast of the country occurred on Friday, leading to a partial shutdown and electricity shortages in the surrounding region.
"The accident happened in the third block of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in the power output section. This is in no way associated with the reactor," Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn told reporters.
Demchyshyn said tests would be run at the affected block over the next two days and "by Friday it will be working at full strength.
Nuclear power accounts for 44 percent of Ukraine's power production, according to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
A statement on the power plant's website had said that production unit three had been disconnected from the power network until December 5 and that radiation levels around the plant were "unchanged".
Ukraine was the scene of the worst nuclear accident in history in 1986, when an explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in the north of the country released radiation across large swathes of Europe and the then Soviet Union.
From RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
The Ukrainian parliament has approved a new government to be headed by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
The cabinet was approved on December 2 with 288 votes, a majority in the Verkhovna Rada.
The vote came five weeks after early parliamentary elections won by pro-Western parties.
Five political parties agreed last month to form a coalition government that vows to pass an extensive program of reforms.
Yatsenyuk has served as prime minister since February, shortly after pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country.
Parliament voted earlier to reappoint Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak.
Yatsenyuk's government includes Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, an American who previously worked at the U.S. State Department and received Ukrainian citizenship on December 2; Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, a Lithuanian investment banker; and Health Minister Aleksandr Kvitashvili, who was health minister in Georgia under former President Mikheil Saakashvili.
A bit of a false alarm, it would appear:
Just in from AFP:
EU disburses 500 mn euros in aid to Ukraine