Reupping this.....
WATCH: A Day With Ukraine's Frontline Medics
Bullet wounds, shrapnel, loss of blood -- it's all in a day's work for medical volunteers in Avdiyivka, where a cease-fire between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists often exists in name only. (Levko Stek and Marian Kushnir, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for June 19. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
Germany's Foreign Minister Accuses NATO Of 'Warmongering'
By RFE/RL
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has criticized NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe as "warmongering."
"What we should avoid today is inflaming the situation by warmongering and stomping boots," Steinmeier told the German tabloid Bild Am Sonntag in an interview to be published on June 19.
He said it is a mistake to think "you can increase security in the alliance with symbolic parades of tanks near the eastern borders."
NATO announced on June 13 it would deploy new battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to ease fears those countries have of Russian aggression amid Moscow's illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and subsequent support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on June 16 that Russia was seeking to create "a zone of influence through military means" and was undergoing "massive militarization" along its borders with countries in the military alliance.
Russia opposed NATO's expansion into former Soviet republics and says it will react to any of the bloc's steps to increase military assets near Russia's borders.
NATO officials will meet in Warsaw next month to formally approve the plans for new deployments along the bloc's eastern flank.
Aleksei Pushkov, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia's State Duma, welcomed Steinmeier's comments as a "voice of reason" amid what he described as anti-Russian hysteria by NATO and Stoltenberg.
"Steinmeier spoke against Stoltenberg's course for scaring Russia. Some voices of reason could be heard from behind the curtain of threats and hysterics," Pushkov tweeted.
President Vladimir Putin, speaking on June 17 at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, said that the United States and its allies have used the Ukraine crisis to "justify the existence of the North Atlantic bloc."
"They need an external adversary, an external enemy, otherwise what's the purpose of this organization?" he said. "There is no Warsaw Pact, no Soviet Union, so whom is it directed against?"
In a separate interview on June 19, Steinmeier said the European Union should gradually phase out sanctions imposed against Russia over the Ukraine crisis if there is substantial progress in the peace process.
"Sanctions are not an end in themselves. They should rather give incentives for a change in behavior," Steinmeier told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, a network of local newspapers.
Steinmeier added that he was in favor of lifting sanctions gradually if the Russian government showed it was doing its part in implementing the 2015 Minsk accords, which set out steps to bring a lasting peace to eastern Ukraine.
The Minsk deal calls for a cease-fire in fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces, along with a range of political, economic, and social steps to end the conflict, including holding local elections in the east.
"An all-or-nothing approach, even if it sounds good, doesn't work,” Steinmeier was quoted as saying.