Here's another update from our news desk:
Pro-Kremlin lawmakers say the Russian parliament should reinstate President Vladimir Putin's formal authority to send troops into Ukraine if the United States provides Kyiv with lethal weapons.
The lawmakers spoke on March 24, a day after the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution urging President Barack Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons to defend itself against Russian "aggression."
A Just Russia party lawmaker Mikhail Yemelyanov told the State Duma, the lower parliament house, that if the "the United States actually starts to deliver lethal weapons to Ukraine we should openly back militias...with weapons, and reinstate the president's right to send troops to Ukrainian territory."
He was referring to Russian-backed separatists whose war with government forces has killed more than 6,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Frants Klintsevich, a ruling United Russia party lawmaker, said U.S. supplies of lethal weapons would "in a second" destroy the fragile cease-fire deal now in place.
Parliament gave Putin the formal authority to send troops to Ukraine in March 2014 , a move that sent a warning signal to the West following the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The authority was later withdrawn, and Russia denies sending troops into eastern Ukraine despite what Kyiv and NATO say is overwhelming evidence.
(Interfax, TASS, AFP)
Pro-Russian, UKIP activist Graham Phillips appears to have fallen foul of Facebook:
Here is an unnarrated Reuters video of the reported funeral of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's eldest son (also called Viktor):
Here is an update from our news desk:
Ukraine's energy minister has said the country plans to stop buying Russian gas as of April 1.
Volodymyr Demchyshyn told a briefing in Kyiv on March 23 that Ukraine does not need Russian gas "at the moment" and added, "We will simply stop buying it."
Longstanding tensions between the neighbors over gas supplies worsened after the ouster in February 2014 of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who spurned a planned trade deal with the EU and sought to bolster ties with Russia.
The EU brokered a deal governing Russian gas supplies to Ukraine over the winter, but Kyiv and Moscow are arguing over the price Ukraine will pay after it expires at the end of March.
Demchyshyn said on March 21 that he was confident Russia would have to sharply lower the price because increased imports from the EU have reduced Ukraine's reliance on Russian gas.
Ukraine currently pays $329 per 1,000 cubic meters, and Russia wants it to pay $348 as of April 1, but Demchyshyn said a reasonable price would be $240 to $250.
(Reuters, Interfax)