Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with some of the tweets that caught our eye overnight:
Here's an item from our news desk:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has pardoned a Russian citizen arrested in eastern Ukraine and exchanged him for a Ukrainian serviceman held by Moscow-backed separatists.
Poroshenko announced the exchange on his official website, which showed a photograph of him meeting early on December 1 with the freed Ukrainian, Andriy Hrechanov.
Poroshenko said he pardoned Vladimir Starkov, who was arrested in July in eastern Ukraine and later sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Ukrainian security services had released a video in which Starkov acknowledged being a Russian military officer.
Russia has denied sending troops and weapons to eastern Ukraine, where separatists have been fighting government troops since April 2014 in a conflict that has killed more than 7,900 people.
A cease-fire has largely held since September.
(AP, UNIAN)
Here is a map of today's situation in the Donbas region, courtesy of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE):
