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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

20:48 13.12.2014

20:49 13.12.2014

20:50 13.12.2014

20:53 13.12.2014

11:03 14.12.2014

Some good news for Ukraine.

An International Monetary Fund official says he is "impressed" by Ukraine's plans for economic changes and measures to avoid bankruptcy and defaulting on its debts.

David Lipton, the IMF's first deputy managing director, met in Kyiv on December 13 with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and financial officials.

Lipton said after the meeting that he was "impressed by their vision for an economic transformation of Ukraine and by their commitment to decisive, front-loaded implementation of their reform agenda."

Poroshenko said in a statement on his website that he assured Lipton of Ukraine's commitment to IMF's austerity demands.

Lipton said a team from the IMF -- which has given Ukraine some $17 billion in financial aid in the past two years -- will finish technical discussions with Ukrainian financial officials by the end of next week.

11:13 14.12.2014

11:32 14.12.2014

Peter Pomerantsev in "The New York Times" on truth in Russia.

When I went to work as a TV producer in Moscow in the early 2000s, I would ask my peers which of the “selves” they grew up with was the “real” them. How did they locate the difference between truth and lies? “You just end up living in different realities,” they would tell me, “with multiple truths and different ‘yous.' ”

13:07 14.12.2014

Life satisfaction since 1991. Includes Ukraine.

13:23 14.12.2014

15:05 14.12.2014

Russia is denying its plane nearly hit a passenger jet.

Russia's Defense Ministry has released a statement denying that one of its planes almost struck a passenger jet in midair.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a December 14 statement there is no basis to reports of a near catastrophe occurring.

Konashenkov said there was a Russian military plane over the Baltic Sea on December 12 but said the plane was never closer than 70 kilometers to the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) plane.

SAS spokesman Knut Morten Johansen also said "the safety distance between aircraft hadn’t been exceeded," adding, "This incident has been blown out of proportion."

Sweden's Defense Ministry said on December 13 there had been a near collision between the SAS jet taking off from Copenhagen and a Russian plane.

The Swedish Defense Ministry said the Russian plane had turned off its transponders, which makes the plane undetectable to commercial radar.

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