Barring any major developments, that ends the live blogging for today.
More on Kerry-Lavrov meeting:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the French embassy in Moscow on July 15, laying flowers to commemorate the victims of the Bastille Day truck attack in southern France that killed at least 84 people and injured hundreds.
Kerry and Lavrov also signed a book of condolences at the French embassy.
The visit came after Kerry and Lavrov met for more than four hours in Moscow on July 15 to discuss joint efforts against terrorism, the wars in Syria and Ukraine, and efforts to resolve the dispute between Yerevan and Baku over Azerbaijan’s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Late on July 14, Kerry met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks Kerry described as "productive" and serious.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Putin’s meeting with Kerry “rather constructive, frank, and detailed.”
But he said “there are still many outstanding issues related to real interaction” between Russia and the United States in military operations against Islamic State militants in Syria.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, Interfax, and TASS
Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone -- according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE):
Another story from Crimea -- by RFE/RL's news desk:
Russia To Deploy Advanced Antimissile System In Crimea
Russia plans to deploy the advanced S-400 missile-defense system in the occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea.
The deputy commander of the Russian Army's 18th Air Defense Regiment, based in Feodosia, told Russian media on July 15 that the state-of-the-art system should be deployed by August.
It is unclear whether they will replace or augment the S-300 systems currently deployed there. The S-400 is capable of tracking some 300 targets and engaging three dozen simultaneously.
It has a range of several hundred kilometers.
Russia annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula in March 2014, a move widely rejected by the international community.
The Crimean port of Sevastopol is the home base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Based on reporting by RIA-Novosti and AFP
The Kyiv Post has published a gripping account of life in the embattled Donbas town of Avdiyivka. Here's an excerpt:
Residents Of Avdiyivka Stay Put Under Fire
Yury Shevchenko hasn’t left Avdiyivka for more than two years, even though the Donetsk Oblast city of 35,000 people is battered by shelling almost every month and often cut off from water, heating and transport.
Just one thing stopped this 63-year-old man from leaving one of the hottest spots of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine: his passion for pigeons.
Every day Shevchenko feeds 50 pigeons that he keeps in a metal hut in the yard of his apartment building.
“How can I leave them? I’ve been devoted to them all my life,” Shevchenko said, cradling a small pigeon chick in his hand.
Fighting rages every day not far off in the industrial suburbs of Avdiyivka, 780 kilometers southeast of Kyiv and 22 kilometers away from separatist-held Donetsk.
The locals no longer pay much attention to the daily din of gunfire and shelling, but animals in the city cannot ignore the sounds of war. When they hear shelling, Shevchenko’s pigeons get scared and try to hide, the man said.
Toll of war
Traces of damage from shelling can be seen on almost every building, and every resident knows someone who was killed in the war.
By Avdiyivka’s city hall there is a big black slab with a pile of shell fragments and flowers underneath. There are nine photos of city residents, men and women, glued to the slab, which bears the words: “Dedicated to those killed in this ‘undeclared war.’”
But these nine represent only a small fraction of the number of war victims here.
Read the entire article here