From our newsroom:
Russian gas giant Gazprom said on March 6 it had received a pre-payment for gas from Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz ensuring supplies to Ukraine through mid-March.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said Ukraine had made another $15-million advance payment, enough to receive an additional 45.6 million cubic meters of gas.
The announcement came as Ukraine was facing an impending suspension of gas supplies that could have started as early as March 6.
Under the terms of an agreement the European Union (EU) helped mediate between Russia and Ukraine in October, Russia agreed to reduce the price it charges Ukraine for gas but Kyiv must pay in advance for gas it receives from Gazprom.
Ukraine faced a cut-off at the end of February but made a $15 million prepayment that at the time Kupriyanov said would give Ukraine an additional 24 hours of gas.
The EU has been concerned about its own supplies as 40 percent of the Russian gas the EU purchases is carried by pipelines transiting Ukrainian territory.
Based on reporting by Interfax and Reuters
EU removes four Ukrainians from sanctions list:
The European Union has removed four Ukrainians from a sanctions list due to lack of evidence.
The EU list, announced in March 2014, had targeted 22 Ukrainian officials suspected of embezzling state funds and illegally transferring the funds outside Ukraine. The EU has frozen their assets held in the 28-nation bloc.
The four men, whose names didn't appear in the updated list on March 6, are: Oleksiy Azarov, the son of the former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, former presidential advisers Andriy Portnov and Ihor Kalinin, and former security chief Oleksandr Yakymenko.
The EU said another four people will remain in the list for three months during which the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office is required to provide more evidence against them.
The list will be updated after 12 months.
It includes ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Mykola Azarov as well as the former head of the Ukrainian Security Service, a former prosecutor-general, a former interior minister, and a former justice minister.
The battle for Donetsk airport was some of the fiercest in the Ukrainian war so far. After 242 days, the Ukrainian government forces retreated from the ruined terminal buildings at the end of January. Now, each day, bodies are recovered from the ruins. (RFE/RL's Current Time program and Voice of America)
Two Injured In Car-Bomb Blast In Kharkiv:
KHARKIV, Ukraine -- A senior special-police officer loyal to Kyiv has been injured along with his wife in a car-bomb blast in the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Police told RFE/RL that Andriy Yanholenko and his wife, Inna, were hospitalized after a bomb under Yanholenko's car exploded on March 6.
City officials said they suffered shrapnel wounds.
Yanholenko commands Slobozhanshchyna, a police battalion whose members refused to participate in a crackdown on the protests that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
An aide to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Facebook that authorities were treating the blast as a suspected terrorist act.
Four people have been killed and 14 wounded in three apparent bombings since January 19 in Kharkiv, which lies northwest of the site of the conflict between government forces and Russian-backed rebels.
Ukrainian authorities have blamed a series of bomb blasts in Kharkiv and the southern city of Odesa on Russia and the rebels. (Ukr Svc, with UNIAN)
Video from our Ukrainian Service:
The aforementioned car that was blown up in Kharkiv:
Here's the map for today of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
