That's all for the live blog tonight. See you again tomorrow!
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with the most recent update from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on the coronavirus situation in the country:
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal says there is no need yet to declare a national state of emergency even as a leading health official announced 10 more cases of coronavirus.
"At the moment, there is no need to introduce a state of emergency in Ukraine. A state of emergency is introduced when there are extreme events. Today, the development of the coronavirus in Ukraine is quite moderate compared to many European countries," Shmyhal told local television late on March 23.
He added that measures the government is currently taking are ample for the time being, though the situation may change in the coming weeks due to the spread of the coronavirus.
Chief Medical Officer Viktor Lyashko said on March 23 that preliminary tests show 10 more people have been infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Confirmation of their tests is expected on March 24 and could raise the number of confirmed cases to 83. Three deaths have been recorded linked to the virus.
According to the Interior Ministry, more than 72,000 Ukrainians have returned from abroad, including from some of the hardest hit European countries, since a nationwide quarantine was imposed from March 12 to April 3.
Among those diagnosed with the coronavirus are several members of parliament, including Ruslan Horbenko, a member of the ruling party.
Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the heads of church confessions to conduct prayer services online and without the presence of people at places of worship.
"I thank those church leaders who understand the danger and conduct divine service online, without people. I am sure other leaders will join these forced measures. After all, today people really need faith, but they equally need basic security," he said.
Since March 17, all aviation, rail and bus services with foreign countries and within the country have been shut down. Shopping centers, cafes, restaurants, gyms, and other nonessential facilities have been shuttered. Only grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations, and banks are still open.
The previous day, Kyiv further closed public transportation, allowing only critical personnel to take buses, trolleybuses, and trams. Metro systems were closed in Kyiv, Odesa, and Dnipro on March 17.
Several cities, including Kyiv, have declared states of emergency.
In other news (courtesy of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service):
Polish Court Convicts Three Men For Torching Hungarian Center In Ukraine
A court in Krakow has found three Polish men with right-wing, pro-Russian leanings guilty of committing terrorist acts for their roles in firebombing a Hungarian cultural center in western Ukraine last year.
They were convicted on March 23 of torching a Hungarian-funded cultural center in Ukraine’s westernmost Zakarpattya region where more than 100,000 ethnic Hungarians reside.
The mastermind, 29-year-old Michal Prokopowicz, was sentenced to three years in prison.
His accomplice, Tomasz Rafal Szymkowiak, 23, was given two years.
A third suspect, 26-year-old Adrian Marglewski, who cooperated with investigators, was sentenced to two years of supervised release and ordered to do community service.
The center was attacked on February 4, 2019 when a Molotov cocktail was thrown through its window. Later that month, another was thrown, causing a fire that destroyed most of the ground floor.
Poland’s domestic security agency, ABW, detained the three suspects the same month.
Ukrainian authorities had given Polish authorities evidence and closed-caption video footage of the men staying at a hostel in the regional capital of Uzhhorod, where they had registered in their real names. They were also shown purchasing gasoline at a local gas station.
"This attack was in line with the course of Russia's actions against Ukraine: the purpose was to weaken Ukraine internally and destabilize the situation in this country,” Mariusz Sadlo, a national prosecutor in Warsaw’s department of Organized Crime and Corruption, said in the courtroom.
The incident prompted Hungary to summon the Ukrainian ambassador to warn against rising "extremism" in the country.
It further strained relations between the neighboring countries over a Ukrainian education law that was enacted in 2017, elevating the status of the Ukrainian language and which Budapest said restricted the right of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine to be educated in their native language.
Prokopowicz is a member of the ultraright, pro-Russian Zmiana party, whose founder -- Mateusz Piskorski -- was arrested in 2016 on suspicion of spying for Russia and China.
Szymkowiak and Marglewski are members of the neofascist Falanga group whose members have been known to have participated in the war in Ukraine’s east on the side of Russian-backed separatists.
Prokopowicz and Szymkowiak had pleaded not guilty.
During the trial on January 14, Prokopowicz told the court that he received instructions and money for the arson attack from a German journalist who has worked as a consultant for a German member of parliament with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Prokopowicz named Manuel Oschsenreiter, who has denied the allegation as "false."
Oschsenreiter is known to have ties to Zmiana and is editor of the right-wing German magazine Zuerst! (First!).
He has been a frequent commentator in Russian state media over the past six years, voicing support for Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine and denouncing what he calls the Western media’s anti-Moscow bias.