Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with an update from our news desk on how the Ukraine talks in Paris went last night:
The foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany tried on June 23 to revive high-end diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, amid escalating fighting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said afterward that the four agreed to "not allow a breakdown" of a peace deal reached in February.
"There is a sense that there are powers who would like to destroy this process," Lavrov told reporters in Paris. "I won't name them. But such forces exist. Many for different reasons prefer military, security scenarios; many do not want the situation to calm down, but to the contrary they want it to worsen. Today all four ministers firmly spoke out against such efforts."
He and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier complained of routine violations of a cease-fire agreed in the February deal, negotiated by Germany and France.
The quartet of foreign ministers called for a quick deescalation of hostilities to allow progress on longer-term aspects of the peace deal.
Those include an array of political, security, humanitarian and economic questions such as the contentious issue of autonomy for the rebel regions.
(AP, Reuters, AFP)
We are now closing the live blog for today. Until we resume again tomorrow morning, you can keep up with all our latest Ukraine coverage here.
Here's an item from our news desk on the latest diplomatic maneuvers concerning Ukraine:
Foreign ministers from Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France have started talks in Paris on ways to halt the 15-month war in eastern Ukraine.
Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists has killed more than 6,400 people in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions since April 2014.
A German- and French-brokered cease-fire deal signed in Minsk in February has proven extremely shaky, with sporadic clashes continuing in parts of the conflict zone.
Ahead of the closed-door meeting on June 23, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said recent deaths show that "the cease-fire isn't just fragile but that the daily violations are becoming more frequent."
"Without a cease-fire, all the other factors won't come together," he warned.
(AFP, TASS, Interfax)