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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

20:57 23.1.2018

That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Tuesday, January 23, 2018. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage. Thanks for reading and take care.

09:24 24.1.2018

Biden: Trump not pressuring Kyiv on reforms, Minsk:

By Mike Eckel

Joe Biden, the U.S. vice president under Barack Obama, has praised a White House decision to supply Ukraine with more lethal weaponry, but also suggested that weaker U.S. policy toward Kyiv was leading to backsliding on crucial anticorruption reforms.

Biden, who was the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine, called Kurt Volker -- the current U.S. special envoy for Ukraine -- a "solid, solid guy."

But Biden suggested that Volker did not have enough authority to be tougher on Ukraine’s leadership on corruption and that backsliding on the reforms could hurt the chances of implementing the Minsk accords, the framework deal reached with Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Volker is "a solid, solid guy. But Kurt, to the best of my knowledge, does not have the authority, or the ability, to go in and say, 'If you don't straighten this up, you're out of here,'" Biden said.

Biden made the comments on January 23 in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

The United States has been a stalwart supporter of Ukraine since 2013, when a series of street protests over closer integration with Europe evolved into a major confrontation with President Viktor Yanukovych, culminating in his ouster in February 2014.

The Obama administration imposed economic sanctions for Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and for its support of separatists in the war with Ukrainian forces that has killed more than 10,300 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

But Washington has also struggled to push Yanukovych’s successor, Petro Poroshenko, to institute major governmental reforms and clean up the country's endemic corruption. The Obama administration was also reluctant to authorize more advanced weapons for Ukraine's military, fearing it would antagonize the Kremlin.

Biden said he and other administration officials had to work hard to persuade European leaders to go along with U.S. sanctions on Russia.

"If in fact you do not continue to show progress in terms of corruption, we are not going to be able to hold the rest of Europe on these sanctions," Biden said he told Ukrainian leaders. "And Russia is not going to roll across the inner line here and take over the rest of the country with their tanks, what they're going to do is take your economy down -- you're going to be absolutely buried, and you're going to be done. And that's when it all goes to hell."

"There is no pressure that I'm aware of...on the present leadership in Ukraine to hold them together to be able to continue what looked like was a real possibility of turning Minsk into something that was doable by being much tougher than Germany wanted us to be," he said. "We were moving in that direction, but it now looks like the pressure is off and it requires day-to-day-to-day" reinforcement.

Reached by RFE/RL by e-mail, Volker declined comment.

The Trump administration policy toward Ukraine had been in doubt early on in his presidency, amid Trump’s repeated calls for a more conciliatory approach toward Russia. During the 2016 election campaign, the Republican Party platform was reportedly changed to water down U.S. support for Kyiv.

However, with Congress and key national security officials showing strong backing for Ukraine, the Trump White House has largely continued his predecessor’s policies.

Last year, the White House signaled it was moving forward on a long-delayed plan to supply Ukraine with more advanced weaponry, to bolster its forces fighting Russian-backed separatists.

Volker is a well-regarded former ambassador to NATO, and his appointment last year was seen by many in Washington as a strong selection to spearhead diplomacy over the Ukraine conflict.

However, the position is only part-time, and Volker splits his attentions between Ukraine diplomacy and heading a Washington think tank named for Republican Senator John McCain.

09:25 24.1.2018

Poroshenko, Volker hold talks:

By RFE/RL

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has met with U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, in Kyiv to discuss the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

According to a statement posted on Poroshenko's website, the two men expressed "serious concern" about Russia's lack of progress in implementing the Minsk agreements during the January 23 meeting.

In a post on Twitter, Volker said he "had a good conversation" with Poroshenko, adding that he will travel to Dubai later this week to meet with Russian diplomats.

Poroshenko's statement said that the solidification of the cease-fire in eastern Ukraine and the "withdrawal of Russian occupation forces from Ukraine" were now "absolute priorities."

Kyiv has been fighting against Russia-backed separatists in parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine since early 2014.

Although Moscow denies interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs, the International Criminal Court in November 2016 determined the conflict to be "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."

The conflict has left more than 10,300 people dead and some 1.6 million people displaced.

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