This just in from Reuters:
The European Union is likely to keep sanctions on Russia in place for now when ambassadors meet next week to assess progress in implementing Ukraine's peace process, diplomats said.
When the EU adopted its latest sanctions on Russia over its involvement in the Ukraine conflict earlier this month, EU ambassadors agreed they would review the implementation of the Ukraine peace plan by the end of September.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy held out the possibility that, if the situation on the ground warranted it, EU sanctions could be amended, suspended, even fully repealed.
A cease-fire between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, which took effect on September 5 and has been regularly violated, "has finally begun working," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday.
"For me, the analysis is that the conditions are so far not ripe to reverse course," one EU diplomat said, ahead of a meeting of EU ambassadors on Tuesday to discuss the implementation of the peace plan.
More choice quotes from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's lengthy news conference in Kyiv today:
"Therefore, our priorities are as follows: First -- anticorruption reform, renewal of structures of government and administration; first -- judicial reform; first -- reform of law-enforcement structures; first -- decentralization and reform of public administration; first -- tax reform; first -- deregulation of business; first -- reform of security and defense systems, something that is most pressing. On top of that, I will add two other special and urgent programs: Our country's energy independence and further promotion of Ukraine in the world."
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"I am convinced that the times when we were being divided over the issues of NATO, [European] treaties, east and west are far behind us. Ukraine is united. Our people, our nation, and our country went through perhaps the hardest trials in its history and has passed it very successfully and I congratulate you on it."
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"There is no law about a special status of Donbas. This is a fiction coming from either [internal] opponents or from abroad. There is a law of a special regime of local governance. Ukraine is not delegating any part of its central national authority to anyone. The issues of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence are not and cannot be for sale. I am supposed to be the guarantor of this and I will be."
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"Believe me, I know the history of Transdniester. After all, it is not about the status, or independence, or territorial integrity as such. The issue is that the 20 years of the existence of Transdniester have doomed hundreds of thousands of people -- who used to live in one of the most prosperous republics of the [former] Soviet Union, with some of the highest standards of living -- to slavery, to ill fate, to misery turning them into outcasts of global civilization."
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"The very example of Transdniester, Ossetia, and Abkhazia convince me and give me grounds for optimism that we will preserve the integrity, sovereignty, and independence of our country."
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"I believe that within three weeks we will hold a meeting [with Russian President] Vladimir [Putin] that will be of a multiparty format, although that does not exclude a possibility of bilateral consultations, and it will take place in Europe. Preliminary arrangements are already in place. It depends on the success of the implementation of the peace plan. Whether [the meeting] will take place in the Normandy format (Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany) or the Geneva format (EU, U.S., Russia, and Ukraine) or any other format also depends on circumstances."
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"The key position is that [local] elections must take place and must be held on December 7 as stipulated by law. Once Donetsk elects its legitimate representative who is able to represent the interests of the Donetsk people, it will be my pleasure to meet him or her. Why not earlier? Because so far there is no one for me to meet there."
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"There will be no peacekeeping troops [in Ukraine's southeast] because the precedents of [Russian] peacekeeping troops in Transdniester and other frozen conflicts have led to countries losing the sovereignty over their territories. There will be no peacekeeping troops on the territory of Ukraine. Period."
A statement from EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele, via RFE/RL's correspondent in Brussels, Rikard Jozwiak, in response to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's reformist Strategy-2020, which he announced today and said will allow the country to apply for EU membership by 2020:
"We support Ukraine in its efforts to deliver on the necessary political and economic reforms to achieve the modernization of the country.
"Currently we are working with Ukraine on the implementation of the Association Agreement, which offers [a] blueprint for these reform[s] and modernization.
"The European Council has recently stated that the Association Agreement does not constitute the final goal of our cooperation.
"What is important right now is to focus on the immediate challenges the country is facing and on ways...to tackle them in the most effective way for the benefit of the people of Ukraine.
"It is for Ukraine to make its free and sovereign choices about its ambitions, orientation, and external relations."
Russian lawyer Pavel Chikov and his Agora group were today awarded an annual human rights prize by Rafto, a Norwegian human rights foundation.
Chikov and Agora were selected for the prize for helping activists, bloggers, journalists, and nongovernmental organizations against the unlawful actions of Russian government agencies, the Rafto Foundation said.
Four previous winners -- Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, East Timor's Jose Ramos-Horta, South Korea's Kim Dae-jung, and Iran's Shirin Ebadi -- later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Reuters quotes Chikov as saying he believes this year's Nobel, to be announced on October 10, should go to someone linked to the conflict in Ukraine, which, he said, "was provoked by the Russian authorities."