An item from our news desk that is not directly related to the crisis but is bound to be of interest to Ukraine-watchers:
Five Killed As Train Collides With Minibus In Crimea
Authorities in Ukraine's Russian-controlled Crimea region say five people were killed when a commuter train collided with a minibus on the peninsula.
At least three other people were hospitalized with injuries following the April 8 accident, which occurred at a railway crossing in Crimea's northern city of Armyansk.
Two people reportedly were in intensive care.
All the dead and wounded were said to be passengers of the minibus.
Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.
Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
ICYMI:
In Ukraine's Language Battleground, Some Soldiers Switching Sides
Language has long been one of the key battlegrounds in the struggle to determine Ukraine's post-Soviet identity. Yehor Huskov has become an unlikely frontline soldier.
The 33-year-old was born in Soviet Russia to a Russian father and Ukrainian mother before moving when he was a small boy to Dnipropetrovsk. Renamed Dnipro in 2016 as part of Ukraine's decommunization drive, the country's third-largest city remains dominated by Russian speakers.
The family's first language was always Russian. But today, Huskov eschews his mother tongue in favor of speaking his mother's tongue, Ukrainian, a move prompted by both historical and recent events.
"I realized that communicating in Russian in Ukraine was actually a continuation of the work of communist Russifiers who tried in every way to destroy the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture," he told RFE/RL in an interview.
While language has long been a hot-button issue across the country, it has become an even thornier issue since Russia's 2014 seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and intervention in a conflict in eastern regions of Ukraine where the majority of the population speaks Russian as its first language.
"Since then, I basically don't communicate in Russian. Even with Russians, I speak Ukrainian," Huskov added.
Read the entire article here.