Accessibility links

Breaking News
Aleksandr Malykhin, chairman of Luhansk's separatist election commission, announces results of the referendum in the Luhansk region on May 12.
Aleksandr Malykhin, chairman of Luhansk's separatist election commission, announces results of the referendum in the Luhansk region on May 12.

Live Blog: Crisis In Ukraine (Archive)

Latest News

-- Self-appointed leaders of the Ukrainian separatist region of Donetsk appealed to Russia to consider absorbing it to "restore historic justice" and to send in troops.

-- Pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk said they would not allow voting for the May 25 presidential election to be conducted.

-- Diplomats say the European Union agreed to impose sanctions against 13 additional individuals and two companies, believed to be the first time the EU has targeted companies over the Ukraine crisis.

-- Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov called the votes a "sham" and the United States said they were illegal and merely "an attempt to create further division and disorder in the country."

-- RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service said one of its affiliate radio stations in Donetsk was taken off the air by gunmen and replaced by a pro-Russian broadcaster.

-- The Kremlin said Ukrainian officials in Kyiv should hold talks with pro-Russian separatists on the results of the self-rule referendums, adding that it respected the "expression of the people's will."

-- Insurgents in eastern Ukraine said nearly 90 percent of voters backed self-rule in the votes.

*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv
06:57 30.4.2014
RFE/RL's news desk has been reporting on the seizure of a building in Horivka:
Pro-Russian separatists have seized a government building and the police headquarters in the eastern Ukrainian town of Horlivka.

Municipal officials in Horlivka confirmed media reports on April 30 saying that some 20 armed individuals in military uniforms had seized the two buildings in the city -- which is in Ukraine's volatile eastern region of Donetsk.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

A police official in Donetsk said weapons were not being stored at the police headquarters in Horlivka.

Pro-Russia separatists have seized government buildings and police posts in about a dozen towns in cities in eastern Ukraine in recent weeks.

Pro-Russia leaders in eastern Ukraine are calling for public referenda aimed at gaining greater autonomy for their region.
06:20 30.4.2014
05:51 30.4.2014
05:28 30.4.2014
05:23 30.4.2014
Good morning. We will get our Ukraine live blog started today with some interesting comments from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, which have been published in "The Wall Street Journal:"
Secretary of State John Kerry has been thinking about, talking through and wrestling with the Ukraine crisis for weeks, but he still grasps for words to describe the motivations of the man at its center: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"You almost feel that he's creating his own reality, and his own sort of world, divorced from a lot of what's real on the ground for all those people, including people in his own country," Mr. Kerry said in an interview late Monday.

Read more here
19:25 29.4.2014
18:49 29.4.2014
Quick rundown of Kerry's speech tonight from our news desk:
U.S. Secretary Of State John Kerry has said events in Ukraine are a "wake-up call" to NATO allies.

Kerry said in a speech in Washington on April 29 that through its occupation of Crimea and its subsequent destabliziation of eastern Ukraine, Russia seeks to "change the security landscape of eastern Europe."

He said NATO allies "have to make it absolutely clear to the Kremlin that NATO territory is inviolable we will defend every single inch of it."

He said the United States and its European allies have worked hard to try to "set a new course in the post-Cold War era."

He said Russia's actions in Ukraine showed that President Vladimir Putin "is playing by a different set of rules."
18:09 29.4.2014
18:09 29.4.2014
16:36 29.4.2014

Load more

XS
SM
MD
LG