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.
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."