Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with a few tweets that caught our eye overnight:
That concludes our live-blogging for today. Please join us again tomorrow for more coverage.
An AFP report:
Two Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the country's war-torn east where government forces are seeking to put down a pro-Russian insurgency, the first reported casualties in nearly three weeks, Ukraine's military said Sunday,
"Over the last day, as a result of clashes one Ukrainian soldier was killed and another three were wounded," military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told journalists.
He was killed by mortar fire on the outskirts of ,Gorlivka, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) northeast of the rebels' de facto capital Donetsk, Motuzyanyk said.
The spokesman said the other Ukrainian soldier was killed when his vehicle hit a makeshift explosive device, which also injured another serviceman.
Over 9,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 injured in the conflict in Ukraine since April 2014, according to the United Nations.
Kiev and the West have accused Russia of suporting the insurgency and sending regular troops across the border, claims that Moscow has repeatedly denied.
A series of truce agreements have helped to significantly reduce the fighting, although sporadic clashes continue on the frontline.
An abridged report from TASS:
Forty-three ceasefire violations by Ukrainian troops have been reported in the past day, a spokesman for the defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR)
said on Sunday.
"Ukrainian troops opened fire at the republic's territory 124 times in 43 episodes of ceasefire violation," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.
According to the DPR defense ministry, Ukrainian troops shelled the area around the former Donetsk airport, including the Volvo Center, the settlements of Zhabichevo and Spartak, and the villages of Staromikhailovka and Trudovskiye in Donetsk's western suburbs, as well as the settlement of Signalnoye south of Donetsk, the settlement of Zaitsevo
in Gorlovka's northern suburb and Gagarin mines in Gorlovka. Fire was open from 120mm and 82mm mortars, armored vehicles, grenade launchers and firearms.
"The Ukrainian side continues to use banned weapons from its positions in the buffer zone. Casualties and damages are specified in the settlement of Sakhanka," the spokesman said.
An Interfax report:
The militiamen continued shelling the Ukrainian Armed Forces' positions in the military operation area during Sunday, Kyiv said.
The militiamen have breached the ceasefire 27 times since midnight, the press center of the military operation headquarters reported in a statement posted on the press center's Facebook page on Sunday evening.
In the Donetsk airport area the militiamen have fired grenade launchers and large-caliber machineguns on the checkpoints of the military operation forces in Opytne and Pisky, the statement reads.
The militiamen have fired grenade launchers of different systems and infantry combat vehicles on the Ukrainian army positions not far from Novhorodske, Kyiv said.
The militiamen have waged the most intensive fire on the Ukrainian army fortifications in the Krasnohorivka populated area, the headquarters press center reported. The militiamen have fired 82mm and 120mm mortars and large-caliber machineguns in this populated area.
The Ukrainian army checkpoints in Avdiyivka, Maryinka, Troitske and Verkhniotoretske have also been shelled, the statement said.
A TASS report:
A sum of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars of arrested financial assets of Ukraine's former President Viktor Yanukovich and his team will be used to finance the army, Ukrainian Prime Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Sunday.
"I hope the law enforcement system and the judicial authorities will do their best to have the money stolen from the Ukrainian people be returned to the budget. This source will be used to modernize the army and raise social standards," he said in traditional weekly televised
interview. He said he meant a sum of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars "in the assets of the former [Yanukovich] regime which are under arrest but there is neither a court ruling nor forfeiture to the budget as of yet."
In 2014, Ukraine's state financial monitoring authority ruled to arrest 1.5 billion U.S. dollars allegedly owned by Yanukovich, his family and his closest mates. The money however has not yet been forfeited since there is no relevant court ruling. "It is impossible to return the
criminally-earned assets as long as there is no court ruling," Vitaly Kasko, a deputy prosecutor general, said back then.
In September 2015, Ukraine's government took a decision to change the legislation to forfeit properties owned by Yanukovich and other former government members, including Nikolai Azarov, Sergei Arbuzov,Vitaly Zakharchenko, and Alexander Klimenko.
The last Soviet-era monument has come down in Dnipropetrovsk:
Seventeen families in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk returned to their rebuilt apartments, which had been destroyed in fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in 2014.
This mural recently appeared on a building in Kharkiv:
In "Letters from Occupied Donbas," Serhiy Andreev writes about how so many of his friends joined the Russia-backed separatists: