The latest update from the OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine:
ITAR-TASS has quoted a Russian minister as saying Russian would build its own aircraft carrier if France canceled the billion-dollar Mistral deal, and it would be better.
Russia will build an aircraft carrier on its own if France annuls the supplies of Mistral helicopter carriers, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Wednesday as he answered a question from Itar-Tass.
He said the Russian ship would be better than the Mistral because it would be ice-strengthened and would be capable of operations in Arctic seas.
"I don't think the renunciation (of supplies of the Mistrals) is highly beneficial for the French President and will cause a big crisis at the shipyard that is building these ships," Rogozin said. "Also, the French will have to pay a penalty as all these things are mentioned in the contract.
"When we were placing the orders for these ships we didn't have a technology of large-size assembly then but now we have gotten it," Rogozin said.
By handing over an aircraft carrier to India last year "we demonstrated the ability to build such ships, all the more so that now we have shipyards with dry docks in Crimea and they presuppose ability to build ships of this class, he said.
To read about the recent history of tensions in Crimea over the right to land, read Robert Coalson's In Crimea, A Simmering Cauldron from earlier this year.
The BBC has a short report about how U.S. actor David Duchovny has become a Russian symbol, even as he learned that his background wasn't Russian, but Ukrainian. Watch here.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has published a commentary on its official website warning that the latest U.S. sanctions "will only bring the further complication of Russian-American relations" and create "an extremely unfavorable backdrop in international affairs." It accuses the White House of "covering the bloody military operation of Kyiv" and operating with the "sole aim [of] getting even with us for policies that are "independent and uncomfortable for Washington."