Good morning. We'll get the live blog started today with this item issued by our news desk overnight. It seems there has been something of an uptick in fighting in the east.
At Least Six Die In Sudden Surge Of Violence In Eastern Ukraine
At least six people died in clashes between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, officials said on October 28.
The surge of deaths in the two-year conflict came 10 days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande tried to breathe life into a stalled peace process during talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Berlin.
"Over the past 24 hours, as a result of fighting, one Ukrainian serviceman was killed," Kyiv's military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters, accusing the separatists of "a sharp intensification" of attacks.
The separatists' news agency said at least two of their fighters were killed and another six wounded on October 27.
The TASS news agency reported that four separatist fighters were killed and nine wounded.
The separatists also reported the death of three civilians and the wounding of 18 others by Ukrainian shelling near Donetsk.
The Berlin summit failed to resolve one of Europe's bloodiest conflicts since the Balkans wars of the 1990s, with the leaders only agreeing to come up with a "road map" for peace by the end of next month.
The fighting has claimed over 9,600 lives since the conflict began in 2014.
Based on reporting by AFP and TASS
We are now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again with all the latest developments tomorrow morning. Until then, you can catch up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
Here's a news item from RFE/RL's Belarus Service, which also pertains to Ukraine:
Belarusian Court Orders House Arrest For Blogger Critical Of Russia
A Minsk court has sentenced a Belarusian blogger to nearly two years of house arrest after finding him guilty of "inciting hatred" on his blog, which was critical of Russian policy toward Belarus and Ukraine.
Eduard Palchys, 26, had been held in jail since January as prosecutors investigated his case.
Under the court sentence, Palchys must return home nightly and regularly report to local police.
Belarusian authorities had opened a criminal case into Palchys's blog posts in late 2014.
Last year, he was ordered held in a psychiatric hospital for one month, and when he was released, he fled to Ukraine.
Palchys was then arrested in January by Russian security forces as he was trying to enter that country.
He was subsequently extradited to Belarus, where he was immediately jailed.