Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
Poland agrees military cooperation with non-NATO Sweden
Warsaw, Sept 14, 2015 (AFP) -- NATO member Poland on Monday signed a deal on military cooperation with non-member Sweden amid concerns raised by increased Russian military activity in the Baltic.
"Once a sea of peace, the Baltic has become a sea of danger," Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told reporters at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Swedish counterpart Peter Hultqvist.
Hultqvist said the increased presence of Russian warships and warplanes in the Baltic Sea had prompted Stockholm to take "two strategic decisions".
One was to boost defence spending by 11 percent over five year, and the other was to reinforce cooperation with NATO as a whole, as well as with its individual members.
Sweden's foreign ministry on Friday summoned Russia's ambassador after Moscow threatened "retaliatory measures" if the Scandinavian country joined NATO.
The increased tensions come on the heels of Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and backing of separatist forces in the country's east.
President Petro Poroshenko commented on the possibility of appointing Mikheil Saakashvili, currently Odesa governor, as Ukrainian prime minister. A petition asking the president to appoint Saakashvili as the head of the government has collected more than 31,000 signatures online.
"He will be a great prime minister. In Georgia. As for our country, we already have a government," Poroshenko said in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.
According to the new amendment to Ukrainian law, the president has to respond to all electronic petitions that gain more than 25,000 supporters online.
EU extends sanctions against Russia over Ukraine crisis
BRUSSELS (AP) -- The European Union has extended by six months a visa ban and asset freeze targeting several close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and others involved in Russia's annexation of Crimea and other territorial disputes in Ukraine.
The EU said Monday that the "assessment of the situation did not justify a change in the regime of sanctions" under which 149 people and 37 entities are currently listed. The 28-nation EU has coordinated its sanctions in close cooperation with Washington.
The extension came amid continued unrest in eastern Ukraine throughout the year.
Despite a cease-fire declared in February, both Ukrainian troops and the Russia-backed separatists carried out regular artillery strikes until they pledged anew to implement the truce from Sept. 1.
Two soldiers killed in eastern Ukraine despite ceasefire
Kiev, Sept 14, 2015 (AFP) -- Ukraine on Monday said two soldiers were killed in fresh clashes with pro-Russian rebels, troubling a new truce that has mostly held for the last two weeks.
"Over the last day, we lost two soldiers in fighting as well as two wounded and one who is listed as missing," Kiev military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists.
Lysenko accused rebels of sporadically firing mortar rounds in the conflict-ridden Lugansk and Donetsk regions and said government forces had returned fire.
The new ceasefire in Ukraine's war-torn east came into force on September 1, stilling much of the fighting that had rumbled on in hotspots despite an earlier truce deal in February.
The move is the latest attempt to stop a conflict that has killed some 8,000 people since April 2014 and left almost 18,000 wounded, according to UN figures.
Pro-Moscow militants in Donetsk -- whom the West and Kiev say Russia has armed and supported -- reported Monday that two civilians in the frontline town of Gorlivka were wounded by a landmine on Sunday.
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, who thrashed out the earlier truce deal after marathon talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk, are set to meet again in Paris in early October.