Lavrov: U.S. signals it wants to mend ties:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the United States has been sending "signals" that it wants to start repairing ties with Moscow.
Relations between Russia and the West are at a post-Cold War low because of Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking at a youth meeting near Moscow on August 24, Lavrov said Russia was open to dialogue, though it would also not "beg" for better relations.
"If we receive a proposal to start, even gradually, restoring these channels, mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation that have been frozen by our American partners, I am sure...we will agree to restore these channels," Lavrov said.
"We are already getting such signals from the Americans, though for now not very clear," he added. (Reuters, Interfax)
At a military parade in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko marked Independence Day with a promises of more troops for eastern Ukraine.
Ilya Novikov, the lawyer of jailed Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that he expected the verdict in her case to be delivered at the end of September or the beginning of October.
"Court hearings in Donetsk [in Russia's Rostov-on Don region] won't start before next week," he said. "It will only be the second stage of the preliminary hearing. I'm not quite sure when the main hearing will be. But I think that by the end of September or at the beginning of October we will have the sentence."
Today, Novikov published a photo of a blue-and-yellow ribbon tied to the rearview mirror of his car as he was driving past the Kremlin. He wrote #IndependenceDay in Ukrainian.
Poll: Support for independence rose in year of conflict:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
A new opinion poll from Ukraine shows that after 16 months of war against Russian-backed separatists in the country's east, more Ukrainians now support independence than at any time in the last 15 years.
The findings by the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center come from a survey conducted ahead of Ukraine's August 24 Independence Day celebrations, which commemorate its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
Andriy Bychenko, the director of sociological research at the Razumkov Center, told RFE/RL the survey reflected a surge of patriotic feelings since the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and the outbreak of war with separatists about two months later.
Bychenko said that "the fact that Ukraine did not give up" and allow eastern Ukraine to break away from the rest of the country with Russia's military support was "a manifestation, not a cause, of a high level of support for independence."
Not all analysts see the survey as a promising sign for Ukraine, which is struggling with severe economic troubles and an armed conflict that persists despite a cease-fire deal signed in February 2015.
It was impossible for the researchers to conduct their opinion survey in parts of eastern Ukraine now under the control of separatists or on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum deemed illegal by about 100 countries.
Kyiv-based commentator Oksana Zabuzhko told RFE/RL the poll's indication that only 72 percent of Ukrainians in government-controlled territory support independence was "a most alarming signal for the Ukrainian state."
Still, a similar study conducted in 2014 by the Razumkov Center -- which also did not include residents in Crimea or the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine -- found that only 61 percent of respondents supported Ukraine's independence.
The new poll's results do not mean that a large minority of Ukrainians oppose independence: The survey found that 8 percent of respondents would now vote against independence, while the remaining 20 percent did not offer an opinion.
Ukraine's population, including Crimea and the parts of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that are controlled by separatists, is about 46 million.
There are about 2.5 million people living in Crimea and about 1.3 million in separatist-controlled parts of the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, from which many have fled since the conflict erupted.
The shifting population and poll numbers indicate that support for independence has risen substantially since 2005 -- a year after the Orange Revolution ushered a pro-Western president to power -- when a poll by Razumkov found that 53 percent of all Ukrainians supported it.
But still, the August 2015 survey results stand in stark contrast to 24 years ago, when 90 percent of Ukrainians supported the parliament's August 24, 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in a popular referendum that December. (Written by Ron Synovitz)
Manneken Pis, “Little Man Pee,” a landmark small bronze statue in Brussels, was dressed as a Ukrainian Cossack to mark the country’s Independence Day.