New from Reuters:
Separatists Say Ukraine Has Violated Peace Deal
DONETSK, Ukraine, Nov 5 (Reuters) -- Separatist leaders in east Ukraine accused President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday of violating a peace deal by deciding to suspend a law giving their regions a "special status" and signalled they would no longer abide by it.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics in the Donbass region said the decision undermined a protocol agreed at talks on Sept. 5 in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, under which a ceasefire went into effect in east Ukraine.
Poroshenko, who accuses the rebels of violating the Minsk agreement by holding leadership elections on Sunday, said on Tuesday that he wanted parliament to scrap the law offering "special status" to the eastern regions.
The law would have given Donetsk and Luhansk limited rights to run their own affairs and shield separatist fighters from prosecution.
"Kiev's cancellation of the special status for Donbass causes serious damage to the Mink peace process," the pro-Russian separatists said in a joint statement.
Signalling they believed this nullified the Minsk agreements, they added: "The DNR and LNR cannot act on the basis of a document from which Poroshenko has removed fundamentally important points."
They said they were ready to renegotiate the Minsk agreement, intended to help end a conflict in which more than 4,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since the separatists rose up against Kiev's rule in mid-April.
Poroshenko has said he will propose a new law to provide a "special economic zone" for the Donbass region and set a new date for hoped-for Ukrainian-run local elections, originally planned for early December.
From AFP:
Russia's gas giant Gazprom on Wednesday confirmed receipt of part of the money Ukraine owes it for gas, but Kiev must now pay ahead for the gas to flow.
Ukraine's state-owned energy group Naftogaz said late Tuesday that Kiev has paid $1.45 billion, the first tranche of $3.1 billion of its gas debt.
"The banks told us that the amount Ukraine owes for last year is on their way," said Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov.
Gazprom had cut gas deliveries to neighbouring Ukraine in June, leading to fears by European consumers that Ukraine may be forced to tap into the gas it transports westwards.
After several acrimonious rounds of talks the sides reached an agreement last week that Kiev must pay the full amount it owes before the end of the year and set a new price for Ukraine at $385 that will be valid through March 2015.
Deliveries will resume "as soon as prepayment arrives", Kupriyanov told AFP, confirming that gas would flow 48 hours after Gazprom receives the money.
Gazprom says Naftogaz owes it a total of $5.3 billion, and a Stockholm arbitration court is to decide on whether Ukraine must pay the $2.2 billion difference or not.
From "Bone By Bone, Ukraine Identifies Its Dead," by Maria Antonova of AFP:
Before the war, Oksana Biryukova's lab helped investigators connect criminals to crime scenes. Now her equipment is buzzing around the clock trying to identify the charred remains of Ukrainian soldiers.
The DNA laboratory in the southeastern city of Zaporizhia is the only one in the country charged with creating genetic profiles for the unidentified bodies of Ukrainian servicemen killed in the conflict with pro-Russian separatists.
"These samples arrive every day," Biryukova, the chief analyst at the interior ministry lab told AFP, nodding at brown boxes stacked in the corner of her gleaming white workplace.
"The full picture -- nobody knows it," she said. "The 400 that we have handled is just some of the work."
Trying to put a name to the remains of those killed in the seven months of brutal fighting in east Ukraine can be a difficult task.
Body fragments sent to Biryukova's lab are often so degraded that specialists have to run tests several times, she said, showing vacuum-packed bones and a piece of jaw lying in an unassuming refrigerator.
"Most of the time we can only use bone tissue (to run tests) because samples come from people who have burnt almost completely."
Read the full story here.
Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine by the National Security and Defense Council:
Just in from AFP:
Ukraine's prime minister said Wednesday that financial aid from the central government to the separatist eastern region will be stopped until "terrorists clear out of there."
However, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting that Ukraine would maintain gas and electricity supplies so as to spare "ordinary people" during the winter.