Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

Putin also said April 11 in Moscow that Russia has no plans to halt deliveries to Ukraine although Moscow could make Kyiv pay in advance for deliveries.

He spoke just hours after the European Commission urged Russia to honor its gas contracts.

Separately, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in Washington April 11 the West must consider together how to help Kyiv pay its gas bills to Russia

Ukraine says it cannot agree to pay Moscow's new high prices for natural gas and hopes to buy gas instead from Europe.

Ukrainian Energy and Coal Minister Yuriy Prodan said in Kyiv that Ukraine will refer Russia's decision to increase the gas price to an arbitration tribunal in Stockholm.

Russia's Black Sea Fleet says the process of handing over Ukrainian warships to Ukraine has started.

The fleet's press service said on April 11 the "Priluki" missile boat was towed from the Sevastopol dock at Karantinnaya to neutral waters so Ukraine could take possession of it.

Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency cited a source in the Black Sea Fleet as saying Ukraine would need to get tugboats to tow the vessel to a port at Odesa since the vessel is in such poor condition that it is unable to move under its own power.

The same source said the "Fastov" tanker was also given over to Ukraine.

Russia said it would hand back some 70 of the Ukrainian Navy's vessels, most of which, Russian officials claim, are old, obsolete, and in poor condition.

"I’m accused of producing propaganda, of being a propagandist. The word “propaganda” in Greek means dissemination of information, ideas and concepts. For some reason the West is using this word as an insult.

They are calling me the country’s chief propagandist, which indicates either madness or ignorance on their part.

The fact is that all Western news agencies impose a point of view. Take Reuters or the Associated Press. Both are propaganda agencies – they shape the dominant narrative and tell their audiences what and how to think.

Gay culture certainly has the right to exist in Russia, and it does, de facto. Yet, it is a minority culture, and this is all it will ever be. A minority culture should not be imposed on the majority, especially not through aggressive propaganda. I do not believe this unconventional sexual orientation is an illness. I am not even saying it is outside physiological norms. But it is certainly outside accepted social practices, and for me this is a strongly held belief.

Different countries require different quarantine periods since the last homosexual encounter. But homosexuals may have upwards of 1,500 partners throughout their lives, so 500 would not surprise anyone, by comparison. This data comes from respected US and European studies. Homosexuals have a different lifestyle, a different pace. So they are de facto banned from donating. In Russia, the state is responsible for ensuring that HIV is not transmitted through donor blood. The risk is as high as dying in a plane crash.

We have won. We are proud of it. People who deprive themselves of this heroic past live in negativity. They turn into a nation of losers. They only remember the famine and the fact that their land was once occupied."