Sadly, it seems the casualties in eastern Ukraine continue to mount despite the declared cease-fire:
The United Nations says fighting in eastern Ukraine has killed an average of 13 people a day since a cease-fire between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels was signed on September 5.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein announced the figure on November 20.
The UN rights agency said at least 4,317 people have been killed and 9,921 wounded since April in the conflict, which has brought ties between Russia and the West to post-Cold War lows.
It said 957 of the deaths were recorded between September 5 and November 18, a toll that reflects daily violations of the cease-fire deal signed in Minsk.
The number of people registered as displaced within Ukraine soared from 275,489 in mid-September to 466,829 on November 19, the UN rights agency said.
(AP, Reuters)
Here's an update from our news desk:
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says a group of its monitors was shot at by "uniformed personnel" in eastern Ukraine.
The OSCE said in a statement that a uniformed man on the back of a flatbed cargo truck fired two shots in the direction of OSCE vehicles as they were driving on November 19 near the government-held town of Maryinka, some 15 kilometers west of the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
"The bullets struck about two meters from the second OSCE vehicle," the statement said, adding that the convoy left the area immediately.
The OSCE did not assign blame to government forces or pro-Russian separatists, but said the incident occurred in government-held territory.
OSCE monitors are observing a much-violated September 5 cease-fire in the conflict that the UN says has killed more than 4,100 people in eastern Ukraine since April.
It seems Big Macs are back on the menu on Moscow's Pushkin Square (from RFE/RL's news desk):
The first McDonald's restaurant in Moscow reopened on November 19 after closing for nearly three months over health and safety violations.
The fastfood restaurant on Moscow's Pushkin Square, which opened in 1990, closed in late August in what became a string of closures of McDonald's restaurants throughout Russia.
The move was viewed broadly as a retaliation for Western sanctions on Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis.
Many have reopened since, but, according to the company, there are still 200 inspections ongoing and four restaurants outside Moscow remain closed.
The country's food safety agency, Rospotrebnadzor, said the closures, which came after unexpected inspections, were not related to the Russia standoff with the West.
A spokeswoman for McDonald's Russian operations, Svetlana Polyakova, said the company has complied with Rospotrebnadzor's demands.
(AFP, Reuters, dpa, Interfax)
And here's an update on the latest diplomacy from our news desk:
President Vladimir Putin has told the new U.S. ambassador to Moscow that the United States should not interfere in Russia's affairs.
The warning came at a Kremlin ceremony on November 19 in which Putin received the credentials of new foreign envoys including U.S. Ambassador John Tefft.
Putin said, "We are ready for practical cooperation with our American partners in various fields, based on the principles of respect for each other's interests, equal rights, and non-interference in internal affairs."
The remark echoed conditions Putin set out in a foreign policy decree at the start of his third term in 2012, and a similar warning issued by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an address to Russian lawmakers earlier on November 19.
Tefft, 64, is a career diplomat who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Georgia, and Lithuania -- three ex-Soviet republics whose ties with Moscow are tense.
His posting starts at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are badly strained over the Ukraine crisis.
Tefft replaces Michael McFaul, who was ambassador from January 2012 until February 2014.
McFaul, the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama's first-term "reset," which improved ties with Moscow, swiftly became a prime target in a campaign of anti-Americanism that has marked Putin's current term.
(Reuters, AFP, TASS)