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Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya speaks to the UN General Assembly on March 27.
Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya speaks to the UN General Assembly on March 27.

Live Blog: UN Backs Ukraine Integrity

Final Summary For March 27

-- The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution that affirms Ukraine's territorial integrity.

-- The IMF has announced "a staff-level agreement" with Kyiv on assistance of $14 billion-$18 billion in conjunction with a reform program that will "unlock" up to $27 billion over the next two years, pending final approval next month. Tthe U.S. Congress has also passed an aid bill for Ukraine.

-- Ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko has announced plans to run for president.

-- Members of the Right Sector have been holding a demonstration outside the Ukrainian parliament building to vent their anger at the killing of prominent member Oleksander Muzychko earlier in the week.

-- Six Ukrainian military officers detained by pro-Russian troops in Crimea have been released, including Colonel Yuliy Mamchur, but five others are still being held captive.

-- Anonymous sources quoted by CNN say U.S. intelligence "concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine."

-- U.S. President Barack Obama, in the keynote speech of his visit to Europe, chided Russia for its use of "brute force" in Ukraine and vowed that a determined alliance of the United States and Europe will prevail over time.


*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv
15:14 9.3.2014
"I wanted to cry. It is terrifying. This is not my leadership. I want you to know -- there is a different Russia."

-- Mikhail Khodorkovsky, speaking at Kyiv's Maidan rally today


15:21 9.3.2014
Our correspondent in Donetsk Tom Balmforth says Vitali Klitchko's spokesperson said the police and authorities asked Klitchko not to address the pro-Ukraine rally as scheduled to avoid stirring up the pro-Russia crowd.
15:24 9.3.2014
From Reuters:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan agreed in a telephone conversation on Saturday that the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political unity of Ukraine needed to be protected at all costs.

They agreed that the risk of confrontation in Crimea needed to be eliminated and that a referendum planned for March 16 on Crimea joining Russia was "extremely dubious" and "illegal", according to a joint press statement issued by the German government on Sunday.
15:31 9.3.2014
Ukrayinskaya Pravda quoting Center for Military and Political Investigations head Dmytro Tymchuk as saying that "representatives of the self-proclaimed Crimean authorities" have ordered Ukrainian troops at a missile-defense regiment in Yevpatoriya (about 70 kilometers north of Sevastopol on Crimea's western coast) to "lay down their weapons" by 6 p.m. local time, or "a storming of the installation will be carried out."
15:42 9.3.2014
More footage from Lugansk regional adminstration building after it was stormed by pro-Russia protestors. Shows police being led out single file.
15:45 9.3.2014
A tense standoff between pro-Russia protestors and police inside the Lugansk regional administration building:

15:53 9.3.2014
Itar-Tass reports:

Russian television channels have launched broadcasts in Crimea on frequencies which were used by Ukrainian television companies prior to stopping all broadcasts in the autonomy's territory on Sunday morning.

Russia's Channel One, Russia-24 TV news channel, NTV, TNT, STS and Russia 1 will now run their programmes on frequencies that were used by Ukrainian television companies, which stopped all broadcasts in the autonomy's territory on Sunday morning.

The Crimean authorities have not issued any official comments on the channel change. Ordinary people polled in the streets of Simferopol told Itar-Tass that they had nothing against the disappearance of the Ukrainian channels whose coverage of the events in Crimea under the current circumstances had been one-sided.

"Like many Ukrainian media outlets, they are not telling the truth," one respondent told Itar-Tass.
16:10 9.3.2014
OSCE representative describes circumstances under which unarmed international mission, invited by the Ukrainian authorities, was denied entry into the Crimean Peninsula on March 8 in this Telegraph video report.
16:48 9.3.2014
Barring major developments, we are finished live-blogging for March 9.
10:10 10.3.2014

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