Ukrainian negotiator General Volodymyr Ruban is quoted by Interfax, citing Ukraina television, as saying that "[t]o date, we have managed to free up to 30 people, including 16 whose release was facilitated by female singer Ruslana."
Ruban's prisoner-release efforts aim to free Ukrainian servicemen and are undertaken in cooperation with the Defense Ministry and National Security Service.
He suggested there are still around 680 abductees in the Donetsk area, Interfax reported.
The Russian Foreign Ministry says Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke by telephone today about the "crisis in Ukraine" with Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, who will succeed Catherine Ashton as high representative for foreign affairs and security policy for the European Union.
In Chisinau today, Mogherini praised Moldova, which has a breakaway autonomous region in Transdniester in which Russia has a military presence, for choosing "the path of going toward the West."
Chisinau continues to pay the price, politically and economically in the form of import bans by Moscow, for its pro-EU policies of the past several years.
Earlier today, Mogherini was blunt in her criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin's policies, accusing "the Kremlin" of "acting against the interests of its people."
"Putin has never respected the commitments he made in several situations, in Geneva, in Normandy, in Berlin," she also said, according to Reuters. "He wasted the chance to turn things around by influencing the separatists after the shooting down of the Malaysian airplane. The distance between commitments and concrete action has been enormous."
Our story based on an RFE/RL Russian Service interview with Irina Dovgan, the Ukrainian beautician who was abducted and accused of spying for Kyiv, humiliated, and tortured by pro-Russian forces (and fellow residents) before her release late last month.
Here's an excerpt:
Dovgan recalls a "woman who took her time to take tomatoes from the trunk of her car" in order to hurl them at her. The woman then squashed two tomatoes onto her face, causing tomato juice to run into her eyes.
"But the most horrible part was when people would come to just watch. Nicely-dressed young men would stop their cars and pose for photos with me in the background."
And you can read the whole thing here:
Ukrainian Woman Tells Of Public Abuse At Hands Of Pro-Moscow Separatists
From our newsroom. So the latest fighting -- in which, by Kyiv's and some others' accounts, pro-Russian efforts have been boosted considerably by direct Russian military participation -- has taken a significant toll on Ukrainian troops:
Kyiv officials say some 680 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner in recent days by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donetsk region.
Volodymyr Ruban, chairman of the Center for Prisoner Exchange, said on September 1 that "about 80 percent" of the soldiers were captured around Ilovaysk, east of Donetsk, where hundreds of Ukrainian troops were encircled by rebels and Russian troops.
Earlier, army spokesman Andriy Lysenko said soldiers made an "organized retreat" from the Luhansk airport amid an intensifying assault by "professional artillery gunmen of the Russian armed forces."
Based on reporting by AFP, ITAR-TASS, Reuters, and Interfax
ITAR-TASS describes the pro-Kyiv Donbas Battalion -- which comprises volunteers but has frequently spearheaded operations against pro-Russian forces -- as a "punitive battalion."
Prosecutors in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) put the commander of the Donbas punitive battalion, Semyon Semenchenko, on a police wanted list on
Monday.
The Donbas battalion, a voluntary armed unit, was set up in April this year to carry out a security operation against the supporters of the Donetsk People's Republic.
Two seamen are still said to be missing after the attack on those two Ukrainian coast-guard patrol boats in the Sea of Azov (see video of one, destroyed, below), Interfax reports. The Ukrainian border service now says eight other crew members were rescued after the attack, which took place yesterday afternoon.