Here's an announcement issued today by Joe Biden's office:
ADVISORY: Vice President Biden to travel to Ukraine
Washington, D.C. – Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Ukraine the week of December 7th, 2015. The Vice President will meet with President Poroshenko, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, members of the Rada, and representatives of civil society organizations.
This will be Vice President Biden’s fifth trip to Ukraine since taking office in 2009. More information about the Vice President's schedule will be forthcoming at a later date.
James Miller and Pierre Vaux have been writing for RFE/RL on the increasingly precarious cease-fire in eastern Ukraine:
Far from international front pages, the situation in eastern Ukraine is once again on the verge of open warfare.
While the situation around Donetsk, the capital of the Russian-backed fighters, has remained strained since the announcement of the newest cease-fire in September, with sporadic small-arms fire reported almost daily, it has deteriorated significantly in the last two weeks. In the first month of the cease-fire regime, both sides were reporting calm, even playing down attacks that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was reporting; but the Russian-backed separatists in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) are now reporting more and more Ukrainian attacks, often alleging use of heavy weaponry. Meanwhile the Ukrainian military is now reporting attacks numbering in the realm of what was last seen in August during a period of particularly intense fighting.
On November 9, the Ukrainian military claims, Russian-backed fighters conducted 52 attacks, with more reported the next day. By noon on November 11, a Ukrainian military spokesman announced that one soldier had been killed and five wounded over the previous 24 hours.
Notably, the fighting is not limited to the Donetsk area now. Several other key flashpoints have seen attacks over the last week, including the lines near the separatist-held town of Horlivka, the Luhansk town of Schastye, and Shyrokyne, on the Azov coast. Early on November 11, the Ukrainian military reported fighting across a large span of territory -- nearly the entire front from the Russian border east of Luhansk to the Azov Sea near Mariupol.
Russia appears to be bringing tanks back to the fore, with the Ukrainian General Staff claiming early on November 10 to have spotted 20 in the center of Donetsk and another four deployed near the front to the west of the city. Later that day, marines in Shyrokyne told a television news crew that enemy tanks had been deployed to the edge of the village as Russian-backed fighters shelled their positions.
The Ukrainians reported on November 10 that 120-millimeter mortars, heavy weapons that should have been withdrawn in accordance with the Minsk agreements, were used to shell the town of Popasna, in the Luhansk region, and a nearby village. Kyiv also reports an increasing number of attacks from BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles and SPG-9 recoilless rifles.
Read the entire article here