What Russia describes as "humanitarian aid" convoys continue:
Russian humanitarian aid convoy passing customs checks
MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. Russian Emergencies Ministry's convoy with humanitarian aid for conflict-gripped Donbas arrived at the border with Ukraine, deputy head of the National Crisis Management Centre Oleg Voronov told TASS on Friday.
"Now the cargoes are undergoing customs clearance at the two border checkpoints in the [Russian southern] Rostov region - Matveyev Kurgan and Donetsk," Voronov said.
Over 50 trucks carry 250 tonnes of foodstuffs, building products and everything needed for the spring grain sowing campaign in Donbas.
Equal amounts of cargoes are expected to be delivered to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Ukraine Receives $5 Billion IMF Tranche
Ukraine says it has received the first $5 billion tranche of a International Monetary Fund loan for its strained economy.
The Finance Ministry said in a statement on March 13 that $2.2 billion will be put in government accounts and the rest go to the central bank to help stabilize the falling national currency, the hryvnya.
The $5 billion tranche is the first part of a four-year, $17.5 billion IMF package.
The Ukrainian economy has been hit hard by the war in eastern Ukraine, which has shut down industries and severely disrupted trade with Russia.
The IMF loan is designed to unlock other credits for Ukraine from other lenders, eventually allowing Kyiv to receive a total financial package worth some $40 billion.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko said talks would start on March 13 with Kyiv’s creditors on restructuring Ukraine's debt.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
EU unlikely to agree next week to prolong Russia sanctions
BRUSSELS, March 13 (Reuters) - European Union leaders are unlikely to reach agreement at their summit next week to prolong economic sanctions on Russia that expire in July, a senior EU official said on Friday.
New sanctions on Russia are also off the table for now because EU governments want to give a chance to a fragile ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.
But some of the EU's 28 member states had pushed for an early decision on extending sanctions on Russia's financial, energy and defence sectors adopted in July last year over Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
While leaders will discuss sanctions at next week's summit, the senior EU official said a majority would probably want to hold over discussion of renewing the economic sanctions on Russia until July.
"What will be the final point we will see in the Council (summit) but I don't think there is unanimity at all for the rollover of sanctions, the sanctions that are due in July," the official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said.
By the Crimean Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers on the annexed Crimean Peninsula have detained an investigative journalist in the regional capital, Simferopol.
Colleagues of Natalya Kokorina, who works for the Center of Journalist Investigations in Simferopol, told RFE/RL that FSB officers searched her parents' apartment and detained her.
Her lawyer, Dzhemil Temishev, was not allowed to enter the apartment during the search.
Also on March 13, FSB officers searched apartment in Simferopol that belongs to the parents of another local journalist, Anna Andriyevska, and confiscated a computer belonging to Andriyevska's father.
Andriyevska moved to Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, after Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March last year.
The officers told Andriyevska's father she was being investigated over an article published last year which investigators claimed called for the overthrow of the Moscow-backed government in Crimea.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
An excerpt:
KHARTSYZK, Ukraine (AP) - Seryozha colors in his drawing of a tank, lost in thought. Like many 7-year-olds in eastern Ukraine, he has trouble recalling a time before the war.
"They've always been shooting," he says, vigorously scratching with the brightest of pencils.
Yelena Nikulenko, the director of the children's home in the rebel-held town of Khartsyzk, says kids like Seryozha have been let down twice.
First orphaned or abandoned by their parents, they were then dumped by their new families when the Ukrainian government stopped paying benefits to foster families in separatist-controlled areas.
"On top of that, you have the war, the shelling, the fear," Nikulenko says. "It will be a scar for the rest of their lives, that's for sure."
The conflict that erupted in Ukraine last year between government troops and Russian-backed separatists has claimed at least 6,000 lives and displaced nearly 1.8 million people. The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that 1.7 million children on both sides of the front line have been harmed through lack of proper shelter, nutrition, medicine or schooling.
Read more here.