Lithuania will supply Ukrainian forces with military aid, Reuters reports:
Lithuania is to provide Ukraine's armed forces with some military aid to help them in the fight against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday.
"We have agreed on supplies of concrete elements of concrete armaments for the Ukrainian armed forces," Poroshenko said after talks with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite.
"This is a real help," he said. It was not clear if the promised aid was for providing non-lethal equipment such as radar or for supplying guns and other weapons.
Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
Three Ukrainian soldiers killed in the last 24 hours, AFP reports:
Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed in clashes between government forces and Kremlin-backed rebels over the past 24 hours in the war-torn east, the Ukrainian military said Monday.
Government positions at strategic flashpoints around the conflict zone came under attack 56 times, the military said.
The mayor's office in the rebel-held industrial hub of Donetsk said that 12 people were hospitalised with shrapnel wounds over the weekend as mortar fire continued to rock the city.
Gas pipelines were also hit by heavy shelling, the city hall said, leaving over 5,000 homes in the beleaguered insurgent bastion without gas in below-minus temperatures.
The casualties are the latest in over seven months of bloody conflict that has left more than 4,300 people dead and displaced almost one million, according to figures from the United Nations.
Some 1,000 people have been killed since the government and rebels inked a nominal truce deal in early September that failed to stop deadly artillery duels at contested hotspots along the frontline.
The pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk are expecting yet another convoy from Russia, Interfax reports:
The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) is expecting the next humanitarian convoy from Russia to reach Donetsk late this week.
"If everything goes well, we are expecting the arrival of a humanitarian convoy at the end of this week," DNR head Aleksandr Zakharchenko told Interfax on Monday.
The self-proclaimed republic needs medicine and food much more than it needs construction materials, DNR Supreme Council speaker Andrei Purgin added.
He said the deployment of mobile hospitals in the DNR was unnecessary at the moment.
"We have equipment and doctors who are trained to operate it. I do not think the building of any temporary structures will be necessary. We are short on medicine and perishable items. We also need food. There is no pressing need for slate or glass. Those who wished to put a new roof on their homes have done so, and those who did not have left," Purgin said.