We are now closing the live blog for today, but we will be back following all the latest developments tomorrow morning. Until then, you can catch up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with a few of the tweets that caught our eye overnight:
The Czech aid organization People In Need says it has had its accreditation revoked in separatist-controlled Donetsk. Here's an excerpt from a statement on the humanitarian group's website:
Donetsk, November 26, 2016 -- People in Need’s (PIN) office in the eastern Ukraine's city of Donetsk has been visited by representatives of de facto authorities in non-government controlled areas who informed PIN’s representative that the official accreditation allowing PIN to operate in the area has been revoked. Authorities did not state any reason why they revoked the accreditation yet.
Local authorities have taken immediate actions to close PIN’s office including sealing the warehouse with humanitarian aid and ordering all international aid workers to leave the non-government controlled areas within 24 hours.
People in Need (PIN) is extremely concerned that this will have a negative impact on the most vulnerable civilians still suffering from the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. People in Need together with another major international organisation were the only two international organizations on the ground providing humanitarian aid in non-government controlled areas of Ukraine. PIN has been delivering humanitarian aid since late 2014 to hundreds of thousands of conflict victims in this area.
“Since the early days of the conflict, PIN has been assisting to civilians on both sides of the contact line, pursuing core humanitarian imperative and principles such as neutrality and impartiality, despite all challenges and problems associated to such work,” says the People in Need Director, Simon Panek. “Therefore we do not understand the steps of de-facto authorities preventing us from delivering the assistance for people, who are in dire need, especially with the winter started,” he adds.
The situation of dozens of thousand beneficiaries supported by People in Need is getting critical with the winter season.
“We’ve helped people with rehabilitation of their houses destroyed as a result of continued fighting. We are providing food to people living alongside the contact line as well as in the places affected by the lack of assistance,” says Tomas Kocian, PIN’s humanitarian Operations Coordinator. “In places, where infrastructure and especially water distribution system were destroyed, PIN regularly provides people with access to water,” he adds, describing the scope of PIN’s work in the area.