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A priest stands in front of a hospital destroyed after shelling between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, Ukraine, on January 19.
A priest stands in front of a hospital destroyed after shelling between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, Ukraine, on January 19.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

Final Summary For January 20

-- A military spokesman says Ukrainian soldiers on January 20 came under attack from Russian regular forces in the north of the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.

-- Germany's foreign minister says he and his counterparts from Ukraine, Russia, and France will meet on January 21 in Berlin in a bid to de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

-- The chief of Russian gas giant Gazprom says Ukraine's discount "winter price" for natural gas will end on April 1. Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller said in a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that the price for Kyiv would be set in accordance with a long-standing contract, one Kyiv has long sought to change.

-- Russia says a European Union decision to keep sanctions against Russia in place shows the EU is not ready to change an "unfriendly course" toward Moscow. The EU's decision "only confirms the fact that the EU is still not ready to alter its unfriendly course or to give an objective assessment of the Kyiv authorities' actions," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

-- A Georgian man fighting on the Ukrainian side in the conflict in Ukraine has been killed in combat near the Donetsk airport, according to relatives. Media reports in Georgia quote members of Tamaz Sukhiashvili's family as saying he was killed in a battle near the bitterly contested airport on January 17.

-- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed deep concern over what it says is the "escalation" of violence between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine over the past two weeks. In a statement, the ICRC said the fighting in and around the city of Donetsk was killing civilians and "preventing" its team from carrying out its humanitarian work.

-- An explosion near a courthouse in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has wounded 14 people, four of them seriously.

-- Russia says Kyiv is trying to solve the crisis in eastern Ukraine through military force and that could lead to "irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood." Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin spoke to Interfax news agency as Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of ignoring appeals for a cease-fire to be respected.

*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv

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From our newsroom:

The United States and Britain are promising to maintain pressure on Russia over its intervention in Ukraine.

U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron made the pledge in a joint opinion article in the January 15 edition of the Times of London ahead of two days of meetings in Washington.

The United States, the European Union, and other nations have imposed a series of sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea last March and its support for separatists whose seizure of territory in eastern Ukraine sparked a conflict that has killed more than 4,700 people since April.

"Our strong and united response has sent an unmistakable message that the international community will not stand by as Russia attempts to destabilize Ukraine," Obama and Cameron wrote.

"If we allow such fundamental breaches of international law to go unchecked, we will all suffer from the instability that would follow," they wrote.

Obama and Cameron are to have a working dinner on January 15 and hold more talks on January 16.

Based on reporting by the Times, Reuters, and BBC

07:25 15.1.2015

EBRD Faces Rare Loss Due To Russia, Ukraine Crisis

By Marc Jones

LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) -- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will probably report its first loss since the global financial crisis due to turmoil in Russia and Ukraine, the development bank's Vice President Andras Simor said on Wednesday.

Simor told Reuters that a fall in the value of its Russian equity investments due to the rouble's slide as well as provisions against other losses in both countries meant an overall loss for 2014 was likely.

The EBRD has suffered only five annual losses since it was created in 1991 originally to invest in the former Soviet bloc countries of eastern Europe, most recently in the crisis years of 2008 and 2009.

Now it faces major writedowns due to the sharp drop in the rouble and Ukraine's hryvnia currency since Moscow's annexation of Crimea in March, which prompted Western sanctions, and the plunging price of oil, Russia's main export earner.

"We will probably end up with a loss at the end of the year (2014)," Simor said in an interview. "But that is exclusively down to valuation (of the Russian equity portfolio) and provisioning."

Since its creation, the ERRD has expanded beyond the ex-communist countries. But Russia remains its biggest area of activity with 5.8 billion euros invested in the country in the form of equities, project loans and other forms of financing. Ukraine is third biggest, behind Turkey, with 3 billion.

About a quarter of the bank's overall exposure is to Russia, with 10 percent to Ukraine, where an uprising by pro-Russian rebels in the east has helped to shatter its economy.

"The devaluation of the rouble has hit the value of our equity portfolio and we have to accept that," said Simor. "Our role is not only to be there when the sun shines, but also in the storms."

The Russian equity portfolio was worth an estimated 3.2 billion euros at the start of 2014 but the 35 percent drop in the rouble against the euro since then will wipe over a billion off that value.

Simor, the former head of Hungary's central bank, said this 35 percent drop would be "a good guide" for the losses its equities portfolio were likely to have suffered.

The overall 2014 shortfall is not expected to be as steep as the near 1.4 billion euro combined losses in 2008 and 2009, thanks largely to profits made in other countries such as Turkey where the EBRD is building up its presence.

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