Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with a few of the tweets that caught our eye overnight:
We are now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again tomorrow morning to follow all the latest developments. Until then, you can keep up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
Here's another item from our news desk:
Siemens Says Delivery Of Gas Turbines To Crimea Breaches Deal, Sanctions
German industrial conglomerate Siemens says that two of its gas turbines originally destined for Russia had been diverted to Crimea without its knowledge.
Crimea has been subject to European Union sanctions on energy technology since Russia's illegal annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Siemens, citing "reliable sources," said in a statement on July 10 that two of four gas turbine sets it supplied for a project in Taman, southern Russia, had "been moved to Crimea against our will."
"This constitutes a clear breach of Siemens' delivery contracts, which clearly forbid our customer from making deliveries to Crimea," it added.
Siemens insisted that "over the last few months, our customer has confirmed to us numerous times in writing that a delivery to Crimea would not occur."
The company added that it would bring charges against "the responsible individuals" and legal proceedings to send the turbines back to Taman.
Separated from Crimea by just a few kilometers of water, Taman, located in Russia's Krasnodar region, is the site of a future coal-fired power plant.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists only that "Russian-made and -built turbines are installed in Crimea."
Separately, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said on July 10 in Istanbul that construction of two power plants in Crimea would go ahead.
Russia has long sought to end Crimea's dependence on electricity from the rest of Ukraine, after repeated sabotage to high-voltage lines on the Ukrainian side of the border.
President Vladimir Putin said last year that Russia would invest 50 billion roubles ($828 million) in upgrading Crimea's energy infrastructure by 2020.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, dpa, and AP
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