News Highlights

Yesterday we reported on a claim from Ukrainian soldier Aleksandr Pogrebiskiy, that a servicewoman had been killed by shelling in Avdeyevka.

Moskovsky Komsomolets has published an article on Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr., an opposition writer who is now in serious condition in the hospital after suspected poisoning.

Oleksandr Motuzyanik, a spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the military operation in the south-east, has told reporters at a briefing today that one Ukrainian soldier has been killed and eight wounded over the last 24 hours.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician and journalist, has suddenly fallen severely ill in Moscow. He is now in the intensive care unit at the Priogorov 1st City Hospital.

Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reports that the Russian Ministry of Defence has called on Ukraine to release the two soldiers captured near Schastye yesterday, despite denying that they are active members of the Russian armed forces.

This morning, May 18, there was a brief anti-war demonstration for 20 minutes in front of the checkpoint of the former Togliatti Military Academy, now the 3rd Brigade of the GRU [Russian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate], BBC Russian Service reports.

Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, is in Moscow to meet with high-ranking members of the Russian government, a trip which follows on the heels of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The Ukrainian military has given a press conference in Kiev on the Russian soldiers captured yesterday near Schastye.

Two men, who the Ukrainian government claims are Russian soldiers, captured yesterday by the Aidar battalion near Schastye in the Lugansk region, are being transferred to Kiev today.

UNIAN reports that the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine (SBGS) has announced that fighting is under way between SBGS personnel and Russian-backed fighters near Troitskoye, north-east of Debaltsevo.