We are closing the live blog early today. Will be back tomorrow. Here's to a peaceful 2015.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
Inflation in Russia ran at 11.4 percent in 2014, the highest rate since the global crisis year of 2008.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on December 31 that the government will ask the Duma to increase the 500 billion ruble ($8.5 billion) limit on spending from the National Wealth Fund as the Kremlin scrambles to maintain social and defense spending in the face of declining revenues.
"We are going to have to use our safety cushion," Siluanov said in a televised interview.
Russia's state statistics agency released preliminary data on December 31 showing that inflation was 2.6 percent in December, the highest monthly rate since January 2005. That was up from 1.3 percent in November.
The projected annual inflation rate of 11.4 percent is up from 6.5 percent in 2013 and 6.6 percent in 2012. In 2008, inflation was 13.3 percent.
Russia's economy has been strained this year in the face of low global energy prices and Western sanctions that have restricted access to Western financing.
Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine by the National Security and Defense Council:
As we noted last night, Oliver Stone has decided the Maidan was a CIA plot:
U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, who is working on a documentary film about recent events in Ukraine, says he believes the February 20 shootings in Kyiv that left dozens dead and injured were carried out by "foreign elements" and the incident had "CIA fingerprints on it."
Stone made the comments in a December 30 Facebook post, saying he just returned from Moscow where he interviewed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Stone did not say why "it seems clear" that the shooters were "outside third-party agitators," but added that details would be included in his film.
Stone also asserted that "well-armed, neo-Nazi radicals forced Yanukovych to flee the country with repeated assassination attempts" and compared the situation to a 2002 attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Yanukovych fled to Russia days after the shootings, following months of protests over his decision to scrap plans for a landmark deal with the EU and bolster ties with Moscow.
Stone said that "the West has maintained the dominant narrative of 'Russia in Crimea' whereas the true narrative is 'USA in Ukraine.'" He called it "a dirty story through and through."
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, in a move condemned as illegal by Kyiv and the West.
Russia's TASS news agency reporting that talks to be held in Luhansk today:
A working group involving representatives of Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk self-proclaimed republics, Kiev authorities and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) officials will meet in Luhansk on December 31, Luhansk republic plenipotentiary representative at the Contact Group talks Vladislav Deinego told TASS.
“Law enforcers will meet in Luhansk on Wednesday,” he said.
Asked whether any cardinal agreements may be reached at this meeting he said that“everything depends on the result.
On Tuesday, Assistant Commander of Luhansk militia corps Vitaly Kiselev said negotiators plan to talk “military issues raised earlier at the Contact Group meeting over crisis settlement in [highly volatile Ukrainian industrial area] Donbass in [Belarusian capital] the city of Minsk.”
The similar meeting was held on Monday, December 29, in another embattled east Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Talks raised three issues, including continuation of Minsk peace negotiations, ceasefire and pullback of heavy weaponry from the disengagement line, the press service of the Donetsk Defense Ministry reported then. Meanwhile, negotiating parties agreed on a next stage of captive swap.
Merkel vows a united EU front on Ukraine:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to maintain a strong and united European position against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
Merkel said in a December 30 early release of her New Year's address to Germans that Europe "cannot and will not accept the purported right of the strong who violate international law."
She says in her speech that Europe in 2014 had witnessed a nation's right to self-determination threatened.
Merkel, who has spoken frequently with Russian President Vladimir Putin since Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March, said such a right is a foundation of the "European peaceful order."
She added that Europe wants security "together with Russia, not against Russia."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will meet with Putin, Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande on January 15 in Kazakhstan to discuss peace efforts between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists. (AFP and "The Guardian")
This ends our live-blogging for December 30. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.