Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
Two Ukrainian soldiers killed by mine in Luhansk:
Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and three others wounded by a land-mine explosion in the eastern Luhansk region.
Hennadiy Moskal, the Ukrainian head of the Luhansk region, said on May 4 that a Ukrainian military vehicle drove over a mine near the village of Yekaterinivka the previous day.
Moskal said the two men were killed instantly by the blast, which occurred in Luhansk's Popasne district.
A southern portion of Ukraine's Luhansk region is controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
More than 6,100 people have been killed in fighting between Ukrainian soldiers and rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine in the past year, despite the signing of a cease-fire agreement in February. (Interfax and the Kyiv Post)
Donetsk separatist leader has little hope for Minsk contact-group talks this week, Interfax reports:
Head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Zakharchenko has doubts about the positive outcome of the Minsk meeting of the contact group scheduled for May 6.
"We - I and [head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic Igor] Plotnitsky - have sent several proposals, verbalized them to our Ukrainian colleagues. But I don't think that the results of the meeting in Minsk will be positive," he said to journalists.
Finnish military reaches out to reservists, denies Russia link
HELSINKI, May 4 (Reuters) -- The Finnish military began sending letters to some 900,000 reservists on Monday in the largest campaign of its kind, amid increased tensions between the Nordic states and Russia over the Ukraine crisis.
The military said the letter campaign, which aims to improve communication with former army conscripts, was prompted mainly by cuts in the defence budget and was not a response to a more assertive Russia, with which Finland shares an 833 mile (1,340 km) land border.
But the move also comes at a time when Russian air force sorties, spy accusations and military border exercises have prompted a debate within non-aligned Finland about how to boost its security arrangements and whether it should even join NATO.
Last month, Finland and similarly neutral Sweden joined with NATO members Norway, Denmark and Iceland in an unprecedentedly hawkish joint statement that directly cited the Russian "challenge" as grounds to boost defence cooperation.
Finland, one of few countries in Europe still to have compulsory military service for men, said the plan to improve coordination with reservists pre-dated the Ukraine crisis, which erupted last year when Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region.
"The aim is to update reservists about their wartime roles and assignments and to open up interaction on how their know-how has developed," said military spokesman Mika Kalliomaa.
He attributed the timing of the campaign mainly to recent defence budget cuts that had changed assignments and locations for many reservists.