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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

10:59 7.1.2018

11:02 7.1.2018

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12:19 7.1.2018

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Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

15:45 7.1.2018

15:59 7.1.2018

Not directly related to the current crisis, but most Ukraine-watchers will probably want to read this feature by RFE/RL's Olena Removska and Tony Wesolowsky:

'Youngest Soviet Defector' Tells His Tale Nearly 40 Years Later

Volodomyr (Walter) Polovchak as a 12-year-old Soviet defector in 1980. (file photo)
Volodomyr (Walter) Polovchak as a 12-year-old Soviet defector in 1980. (file photo)

Wife, two kids, house in the suburbs of Chicago, job as an office manager for the last 20 years. The life of Volodymyr, or Walter, Polovchak sounds like a completely ordinary existence of a Midwestern American.

But rewind nearly 40 years and Polovchak was at the center of a Cold War row after he refused at the age of 12 to return to his home in Soviet Ukraine, won over by the freedoms and opportunities he discovered during a family trip to the United States.

To Washington at the time, he was the "youngest Soviet defector." To the Kremlin, he was a "hostage" along with his older sister Natalia, who also balked at returning to the Soviet Union. Polovchak was soon caught up in a media frenzy, an accidental pawn in the struggle between Washington and Moscow.

"Yes, there was the Cold War then, but I didn't understand that or care about it. I wanted to stay here. I had lived in the Soviet Union for 12 years and I saw what life was like there and the opportunities it offered," says Polovchak in an interview with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service from his home in Chicago.

Read more here

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