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A portrait of slain separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko hangs outside the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on September 2.
A portrait of slain separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko hangs outside the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on September 2.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

-- EDITOR'S NOTE: We have started a new Ukraine Live Blog as of September 3, 2018. You can find it here.

-- Tens of thousands of people gathered on September 2 in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine to mourn a top rebel leader who was recently killed in a bomb attack.

-- Prominent Ukrainian historian Mykola Shityuk has been found dead in his home city of Mykolaiv, police said on September 2.​

-- Ukraine says it has imprisoned the man it accused of being recruited by Russia’s secret services to organize a murder plot against self-exiled Russian reporter and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko.

-- Ukraine and Russia are trading blame for the killing of a top separatist leader in eastern Ukraine.

-- Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the head of the head of the breakaway separatist entity known as the Donetsk People’s Republic, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in Donetsk on August 31.

-- The United States is ready to widen arms supplies to Ukraine to help build up the country's naval and air defense forces in the face of continuing Russian support for eastern separatists, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine told The Guardian.

-- The spiritual head of the worldwide Orthodox Church in Istanbul has hosted Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill for talks on Ukraine's bid to split from the Russian church, a move strongly opposed by Moscow.

*Time stamps on the blog refer to local time in Ukraine

13:13 13.7.2018

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Here's an item from the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:

Court In Russian-Held Crimea Sentences Ukrainian Man To Eight years In Prison

Yevhen Panov, a truck driver from Zaporizhzhya, was arrested in Crimea in August 2016. (file photo)
Yevhen Panov, a truck driver from Zaporizhzhya, was arrested in Crimea in August 2016. (file photo)

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- A court in Russian-controlled Crimea has sentenced Ukrainian national Yevhen Panov to eight years in prison on sabotage charges that Kyiv contends are groundless.

The Supreme Court of Crimea sentenced Panov on July 13 after finding him guilty of illegal weapons possession, attempted arms and explosives smuggling, and plotting acts of sabotage.

Russian authorities arrested Panov and fellow Ukrainian national Andriy Zakhtey in Crimea in August 2016, and accused them of being partners in a two-person "saboteur group" and of plotting a series of attacks on the peninsula.

Zakhtey, who made a plea deal, was tried in February and sentenced to 61/2 years in prison.

Panov's trial started in April. He pleaded not guilty.

Kyiv has rejected Russian charges against the two men and has called their arrests "a provocation."

Russia has prosecuted and imprisoned several Ukrainians on what rights activists say are trumped up, politically motivated charges since Moscow seized control of the Crimea region in March 2014.

In March 2017, the European Parliament called on Russia to free more than 30 Ukrainian citizens who were in prison or other conditions of restricted freedom in Russia, Crimea, and parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

Russia moved swiftly to seize control over Crimea after Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was pushed from power in Kyiv by the pro-European Maidan protest movement.

Russia also fomented unrest and backed opponents of Kyiv in eastern Ukraine, where more than 10,300 people have been killed in the ensuing conflict since April 2014.

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