That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for today. Check back here tomorrow morning for more of our continuing coverage.
RFE/RL's News Desk just filed this update to the Savchenko trial verdict:
Savchenko Rejects Verdict As Murder Trial Wraps Up In Russia
By RFE/RL
A lawyer for Nadia Savchenko said the jailed Ukrainian military pilot will reject any verdict in her high-profile murder trial, as a Russian judge began delivering the decision.
Prosecutors want Savchenko sentenced to 23 years in prison on charges of complicity to murder over the deaths of two Russian journalists in war-torn eastern Ukraine, in a trial widely denounced by the defiant pilot, her country’s government, and the West as politically motivated.
"She is not interested in the verdict. She believes that it has nothing to do with justice," Nikolai Polozov told journalists outside the courtroom in the small southern Russian city of Donetsk, near the Ukrainian border, where the judge began reading the verdict on March 21.
The ruling will not be official until the judge finishes reading his conclusions, which is expected later on March 21 or on March 22.
But Judge Leonid Stepanenko’s words pointed to a guilty verdict.
He told the courtroom that Savchenko, 34, had "deliberately inflicted death on two persons, acting by prior conspiracy, and on the motives of hatred and enmity."
The judge also accused her of being part of a "criminal group" and of aiming to kill an "unlimited number of people."
Read more here.
Here's an item from our news desk:
Russian Official Warns Of Potential Destabilization In Crimea
The head of Russia's Security Council says Ukrainian nationalism and economic pressures could destabilize the security situation on the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine two years ago.
"This is mainly connected with political challenges and economic pressure from our Western opponents," Nikolai Patrushev said in the Crimean city of Yalta on March 21.
Patrushev said Kyiv could seek to destabilize the peninsula by using the "nationalism factor."
He added that extremists, nationalists, and paramilitary groups were forming near Ukraine's disputed border with Crimea.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the seizure of Crimea as a long-awaited moment of "historic justice."
Crimea's annexation via a referendum in March 2014 was widely seen as illegitimate by the international community and followed a military takeover of the Black Sea peninsula.