The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says "as of [the] evening of August 20, 2014 Ukrainian border and customs services did not start clearance procedures yet" on any of the Russian trucks in the stalled aid convoy. Some of those trucks were reported to have moved into the border zone yesterday.
Here's the rest of the Foreign Ministry's statement:
Ukrainian side will proceed with no delay with border and customs clearance as soon as it gets definitive confirmation by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about its readiness to deliver the humanitarian aid to its destination. In particular, the ICRC who bears responsibility on all logistic aspects, including transportation, storage and distribution of the aid on the territory of Ukraine, is expected to get security guarantees for personnel and cargo. Such guarantees for the ICRC should be provided, first of all, by the terrorists groups controlled by Russia, as well as by Russia itself.
We proceed from necessity of synchronizing by the ICRC of all humanitarian aid supplies for civilian population of Luhansk region, including those provided by Ukrainian side in cooperation with other states and international institutions.
Ukrainian military blogger Dmitry Tymchuk says this morning there is continued fighting in Donetsk, Luhansk, Ilovaysk, and a "tense" situation at Saur-Mohyla, in the Donetsk region. He also reports "continued shelling of ATO [anti-terrorist operations] forces, including from Russia," citing nine mortar or artillery strikes from Russian territory.
Russian authorities are continuing to target McDonald's restaurants beyond the capital, where four of the U.S.-based fast-food chain's outlets were shut down by national food-safety inspectors yesterday for what they called "numerous" hygiene violations.
Now, according to Russian agencies, watchdog Rospotrebnadzor is conducting surprise inspections at McDonald's restaurants in the Sverdlovskregion.
Here's our story from last night about the initial shutdowns in Moscow:
Authorities in Russia have ordered the temporary closing of four McDonald's restaurants in Moscow.
Russia's food safety watchdog said its inspectors had found "numerous sanitary violations" at the four sites in the Russian capital, including the first-ever McDonald's in Russia.
A source at the watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, declined to say whether the action was a retaliation for the United States and other countries imposing economic sanctions on Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine.
McDonald's head office in Illinois said it was studying the decision to figure out "what should be done to reopen the restaurants as soon as possible."
Russia's first McDonald's opened on Moscow's Pushkin Square in 1990 and the company sayts it is the most frequented in the world.
This ends our live-blogging for August 20. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.