Explosion In Ukraine's Kharkiv Targets National Flag Memorial
KHARKIV, Ukraine -- A bomb has been detonated under a national flag memorial in Ukraine's eastern city of Kharkiv.
The local prosecutor's office says the incident took place at 3.40 a.m. on April 7.
The explosion damaged part of the memorial and shattered windows at the nearby Medical University building.
Nobody was hurt in the blast.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
A series of bomb blasts have hit Kharkiv and another government-controlled eastern Ukrainian city, Odesa, in recent months.
Most of the attacks seemed to target organizations with ties to soldiers battling pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's east.
Ukrainian authorities blamed the explosions on Russia and the rebels who hold parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Kharkiv and Odesa are seen as prizes coveted by the separatists.
Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
Russia's parliament has stripped immunity from the only deputy to vote against Crimea's annexation last year:
Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, has voted almost unanimously to strip the immunity of lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, the only member of the Duma who voted against the annexation of Crimea last year.
Meeting on April 7, Duma deputies voted 438 to one to remove Ponomaryov's immunity, which paves the way for criminal charges to be brought against him.
Authorities say Ponomaryov, one of the very few opposition lawmakers in the State Duma, is suspected of embezzling some 22 million rubles (about $400,000) earmarked for Skolkovo, an innovation-hub project outside Moscow.
First Deputy Prosecutor-General Aleksandr Buksman attended the Duma session and said there was already enough evidence to charge Ponomaryov.
Ponomaryov, who has lived in the United States since last year, denies wrongdoing and says the embezzlement allegations are politically motivated.
Ponomaryov has already said he has no intention of returning to Russia.
Ekho Moskvy radio last month quoted Ponomaryov as saying, "What's the point of just voluntarily going to prison?" (Ekho Moskvy, TASS, and Interfax)
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this Gazprom related item from our news desk, which is at least peripherally related to the situation in Ukraine:
Russia's state-owned gas giant Gazprom saw its profits drop some 70 percent in the first two months of this year.
Russia's Federal Customs Service reported the decrease in Gazprom's exports revenues April 7 and said they totaled some $7.4 billion in January-February.
The Customs Service said gas exports declined from 37.4 billion cubic meters (bcm) in January-February 2014, for both foreign exports and exports to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), to 27.5 bcm in the first two months of 2015 of which 18.7 bcm went to countries outside the CIS and 8.8 bcm to CIS countries.
The Customs Service also noted that the average price of gas dropped from some $334 per 1,000 cubic meters in January-February 2014 to some $269 for the same period this year.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on April 7 that President Vladimir Putin would meet with Gazprom chief Aleksei Miller on April 8.
Russian news agency TASS reported the agenda had not been announced. Peskov said the Putin-Miller meeting would address "gas issues, which I am not going to announce."
(TASS)