From our newsroom:
Supplies of Russian gas are flowing to Ukraine after a six-month suspension.
Maksim Belyavskiy, the head of Ukrainian gas transportation network Ukrtransgaz, said on December 9 that gas supplies from Russia to his country have resumed.
Belyavskiy said Ukraine should receive some 43.5 million cubic meters of gas daily for the rest of this month.
State-controlled Russian exporter Gazprom confirmed it resumed deliveries to Ukraine after received a $378 million prepayment for 1 billion cubic meters of gas for December.
Russia suspended gas shipments to Ukraine in June as tension mounted following the ouster of Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych and Moscow's annexation of Crimea.
Gazprom cited Ukraine's multibillion-dollar gas debt and demanded prepayment for future supplies.
The resumption of supplies follows an October 30 deal signed by Russia, Ukraine, and the EU to ensure deliveries to Ukraine over the winter.
Based on reporting from Interfax and Reuters
As winter sets in, fighters in eastern Ukraine face a new enemy -- the cold. Evhen Solonyna of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service visited a pro-government checkpoint north of Mariupol on November 8, where soldiers from the Poltava volunteer brigade said they lacked winter uniforms, boots, and thermal underwear.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaking today at a joint news conference with Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders in Moscow:
"We hope that the coordinated line of contact will actually enable the so-called regime of silence and the beginning of the withdrawal of heavy armaments on both sides of the line."
This is higher than the death toll of two that Ukrainian officials were reporting earlier today.
The latest stance within the pro-Russian separatist leadership, according to Interfax:
A date for the Minsk negotiations has yet to be approved; December 12 is a possibility, self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) negotiator Vladislav Deinego said.
"I have not received an invitation to a [December] 9 meeting. We have planned to have a meeting this week, presumably, on Friday, [December] 12. If Ukraine is not ready to sit down at the negotiating table by then, it will happen either on Saturday or on Sunday," Deinego told a press conference on Tuesday.
Via Reuters:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused Russia of violating international law with its actions in eastern Ukraine but said she would do all in her power to achieve a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
"We cannot solve this by military means," Merkel told a congress of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). "We will need a lot of patience, but I'm confident we can get through this."
Interfax quotes Ukraine's top commander, Viktor Muzhenko, as saying that 192 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since September 5, when the Minsk cease-fire was agreed.
Also from the same agency:
"The regime of silence will take effect today and we will discuss the fulfillment of other stabilization measures in eastern Ukraine when we have guarantees that hostilities have really been halted," Muzhenko said.
He underlined that the truce "was declared for an indefinite period of time."