U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, semantically speaking on September 2:
"I think in our view it doesn't matter what we call it. We're calling it an illegal incursion. We're saying [Russia is] violating the sovereignty of Ukraine. We've obviously increased not only the number of sanctions [against Moscow] and kind of sanctions we're putting in place but we continue to consider a range of requests the Ukrainians have issued. So our actions, in our view, on what we're going to do about it is more important than what we call it."
This just in from our News Desk:
A Kremlin spokesman says President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko discussed the Ukraine crisis by telephone and that their views on possible solutions "coincide to a substantial degree."
Russian news agencies quoted Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying, "The heads of state exchanged opinions about what needs to be done first in order to bring an end to the bloodletting in the southeast of the country as soon as possible."
"The views of the presidents of the two countries about possible ways out of this difficult crisis coincide to a substantial degree," Peskov said.
Putin and Poroshenko met last week in Minsk but made no apparent progress toward ending the conflict, which has killed more than 2,600 people since April.
Fighting has intensified in recent weeks and the Ukrainian government and the West have accused Russia of deploying troops to Ukraine, a claim Russia has denied.
We are now closing the live blog for today. Don't forget that you can keep abreast of all our ongoing Ukraine coverage here.
Here's another update from our news desk:
The acting governor of Russia's republic of Udmurtia has proposed using space at the Kalashnikov weapons plant to temporarily house Ukrainian refugees.
Aleksandr Solovyev said today that he had already entered into discussions with officials from the plant about freeing up some of the storage areas at the complex.
However, Solovyev said that this would not be sufficient in the long term and that dormitories needed to be found to house the refugees.
Solovyev also warned that the idea of sheltering the refugees at the Kalashnikov factory was so far only a proposal.
According to media in Udmurtia, there are currently some 1,600 refugees from Ukraine in the republic and some 130 of them, temporarily housed in the Kvars Votkinsk district, need to be relocated.
(Interfax, www.udm-info.ru, and udmtv.ru)
Sign of the times...instructions for guests in a Donetsk hotel
Inmiddels is de lobby dichtgespijkerd en zijn de ramen afgeplakt. Dit is de oorlogsinstructie van het hotel pic.twitter.com/kv5MeyRs1h
— Olaf Koens (@obk) September 2, 2014
HA HA @carlbildt educates the Russian Foreign Ministry @mfa_russia about the gender of #Australia FM @JulieBishopMP pic.twitter.com/KmSmBR1NM9
— Mark Sabah (@MarkSabah) September 2, 2014
And this is still the best comment on the #Ukraine-#Russia-Crisis. Thank you, @Sergey_Elkin! pic.twitter.com/Ds6sNUDj3s
— Benjamin Bidder (@BenjaminBidder) September 2, 2014
Here's is some more detail from RFE/RL's Luke Johnson in Washington on the news that Gazprombank has hired two former U.S. senators as lobbyists:
Gazprombank, the banking arm of Russia's state-controlled natural gas producer, has hired two former American Senators to lobby against U.S. sanctions.
According to a disclosure filed on August 29, John Breaux and Trent Lott were hired by the bank with the lobbying mega-firm Squire Patton Boggs.
Lott left the Senate in 2008 and Breaux in 2005.
The disclosure identified "banking laws and applicable sanctions" as its specific lobbying issues.
The hiring comes after Novatek, a sanctioned Russian natural-gas company, hired U.S. public relations firm Qorvis on August 11 to lobby against sanctions.
Russia's annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine have driven relations between Moscow and the West to post-Cold War lows and prompted exchanges of punitive sanctions.
U.S. sanctions against Gazprombank and Novatek prohibit them from getting financing from U.S. entities for longer than 90 days.