Here's today's map of the security situation, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
Russia has jailed a Crimean historian to seven years in jail, our Russian Service reports:
A historian from Crimea, Oleksiy Chyrniy, has been sentenced to seven years in jail in Russia on terrorism charges.
Russia's North Caucasus District Court on April 21 found Chyrniy guilty of planning several terrorist acts in Crimea's capital, Simferopol, and sentenced him the same day.
Chyrniy, who made a deal with investigators, pleaded guilty.
Chyrniy, along with Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov and activists Oleksandr Kolchenko and Hennadiy Afanasyev, was arrested in Crimea in May 2014, weeks after Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine via a controversial referendum.
Afanasyev, who also pleaded guilty and made a deal with investigators, was sentenced to seven years in jail in December.
Sentsov and Kolchenko are currently in a Moscow pretrial detention center awaiting trial. They deny any wrongdoings.
If found guilty, they may face up to 20 years in jail.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk speaking to his cabinet yesterday on the Victory Day controversy and St. George ribbons, the symbol of Soviet valor in WWII that took on new political dimensions after Russian troops occupied Ukraine's Crimea peninsula last year:
"I want to remind you once more that the symbol of the commemoration [of the victory in World War II] is a poppy, it is a European symbol. Let all the other ribbons be worn by the Russian Federation, which for whatever reason claims it was Russia that won the Second World War.”
“Ukraine is a victor country, and Ukraine will commemorate the end of World War II and its victory over the Nazis."
Moscow accuses Kyiv (via Sputnik) of violating the Minsk cease-fire deal by allowing U.S. troops into the country to train Ukrainians (U.K. troops have been there, too).
And more on the same topic from Reuters:
From our newsroom overnight:
U.S. Says Russia Ramping Up Military Presence Ini Ukraine
The United States says Russia has deployed more air-defense systems into eastern Ukraine and is involved in training exercises of separatist forces in the area in breach of a cease-fire agreement.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf made the accusations on April 22, after Russia’s foreign minister criticized the United States for allegedly exploiting the Ukrainian crisis.
“The Russian military has deployed additional air-defense systems into eastern Ukraine and moved several of these nearer the front lines,” Harf said in a statement. "This is the highest amount of Russian air defense equipment in eastern Ukraine since August [2014]."
Harf also said that the increasingly complex nature of the training exercises of rebels forces "leaves no doubt that Russia is involved" in the training.
The statement said that Russia is also shipping heavy weapons into Ukraine’s east and is building up its forces along the border.
"After maintaining a relatively steady presence along the border, Russia is sending additional units there," it said, adding that the increase gave Russia its largest presence on the border since October 2014.
Harf said Russian and separatist forces maintain a “sizable number of artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers” within areas prohibited under the European-brokered cease-fire agreement signed in Minsk in February.
The fragile truce, which took effect on February 15, has reduced the fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 6,000 people in the past year.
But the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine said last week it had seen a "massive" increase in the number of cease-fire violations in recent days.
Kyiv, NATO, the United States, other Western countries, and even Russian activists have long accused Russia of sending troops and weapons to support the separatists, a charge Moscow denies.
The United States and Europe have imposed sanctions against Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis, warning that the measures will only be lifted once the Minsk deal is fulfilled.
Earlier on April 22, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine's unity and neutrality were in Russia's best interest.
In an interview with Moscow-based radio stations Ekho Moskvy, Govorit Moskva, and Sputnik, Lavrov said "It is in our interest not to divide Ukraine. It is in our interests to keep it neutral, primarily in a military-political sense."
Lavrov also accused the United States of using the Ukrainian crisis to reach what he claimed was a "strategic goal" of Washington to "hinder the development of Russia's cooperation with the EU, especially with Germany."
The Russian foreign minister expressed doubts about the effectiveness of a U.S. program to assist Ukrainian military forces with instructors, claiming that such attempts were unsuccessful in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, some 300 U.S. paratroopers arrived in western Ukraine to train with Ukrainian national guard forces. Moscow warned that the move "could seriously destabilize" the situation in Ukraine.
Lavrov also accused the United States of breaching the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by placing tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.
With reporting by Reuters, Ekho Moskvy, and Interfax
This ends our live-blogging for April 22. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.