Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine by the National Security and Defense Council:
An excerpt from the second part of our "Letters From Donbas" series:
It has unfortunately become fashionable to consider that all those who stayed back in the rebel-controlled territories are pro-Russian morons and accomplices of terrorists, that all decent people fled a long time ago.
It has become fashionable to state that this "cut-off slice" must be left alone, that there's no point fighting for it. Let them die out there in their "Russian world" they wanted so badly.
Unfortunately, this stance is not only misguided, it is also harmful -- both for those living in the occupied territories and for Ukraine as a whole.
Firstly, as long as these armed pro-Russians continue to run the show here, there is a real threat of war for the rest of Ukraine. This cannot be denied. Freeing all the territories is the only hope for solid and lasting peace in Ukraine.
Secondly, there are, indeed, many of these morons here. Many more than some would like. But there are also numerous pro-Ukraine residents here who didn't participate in the referendum and the pseudo-elections.
Yes, we in Donbas have our "own way" of loving Ukraine. Not all of us approve of monuments being knocked down in our cities. Far from all of us regard the [World War II-era anti-Soviet] Ukrainian Insurgent Army and [Stepan] Bandera as heroes. Many of us believe Russian should enjoy the status of second national language in Ukraine. And no, let's be honest, not all of us supported the Maidan protests.
We are, however, united by the desire to live in Ukraine, and we have not backed the separatists in any way. Today, in occupied Donetsk, former "anti-Banderas" supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity shake hands with "Banderas"; advocates of dual-language status shake hands with supporters of Ukrainian as the sole official language.
Do you understand what is going on here?
Read the whole article here.
From Interfax:
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will send the 11th humanitarian convoy to Donetsk and Luhansk on January 8, Viktor Yatsutsenko, the chief of the Emergency Situations Ministry's national center of crisis situations management, said at a ministry conference call on Saturday.
The convoy will consist of 120 vehicles carrying more than 1,400 tons of humanitarian cargo chiefly including food products.
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Friday, January 2, 2015. Please check back here tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
The German Foreign Ministry says Russia and Ukraine have agreed to meet “as soon as possible” to discuss ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
A ministry spokesperson said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier discussed the standoff between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in a January 2 telephone conference with his Ukrainian, Russian and French counterparts.
"There was agreement that a meeting of the contact group should take place as soon as possible," the spokesperson said in a statement without indicating when such a meeting might take place.
More than 4,700 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since the fighting erupted in April after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea territory the previous month.
The conflict has severely strained Russia’s relations with the West.