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Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya speaks to the UN General Assembly on March 27.
Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya speaks to the UN General Assembly on March 27.

Live Blog: UN Backs Ukraine Integrity

Final Summary For March 27

-- The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution that affirms Ukraine's territorial integrity.

-- The IMF has announced "a staff-level agreement" with Kyiv on assistance of $14 billion-$18 billion in conjunction with a reform program that will "unlock" up to $27 billion over the next two years, pending final approval next month. Tthe U.S. Congress has also passed an aid bill for Ukraine.

-- Ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko has announced plans to run for president.

-- Members of the Right Sector have been holding a demonstration outside the Ukrainian parliament building to vent their anger at the killing of prominent member Oleksander Muzychko earlier in the week.

-- Six Ukrainian military officers detained by pro-Russian troops in Crimea have been released, including Colonel Yuliy Mamchur, but five others are still being held captive.

-- Anonymous sources quoted by CNN say U.S. intelligence "concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine."

-- U.S. President Barack Obama, in the keynote speech of his visit to Europe, chided Russia for its use of "brute force" in Ukraine and vowed that a determined alliance of the United States and Europe will prevail over time.


*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv
12:05 10.3.2014
12:03 10.3.2014


Forget Crimea, forget Donetsk. A new battle is under way -- for Viktor Yanukovych's cars.

Levko Stek of RFE/RL's Ukraine Service reports that after the ousted leader fled Ukraine on February 22, protesters took possession of his lavish Mezhyhirya estate as well as numerous holdings -- including a $2-million fleet of more than a dozen vehicles believed to belong to the president's son, Viktor Yanukovych, Jr.

The cars quickly vanished, fueling suspicions that rival militia groups have sought to appropriate some of the vehicles -- including an S-Class Mercedes-Benz and an armored Chevrolet Explorer, which were discovered abandoned, with broken windows, several days later outside Kyiv. (Protesters who discovered the cars called the police but were met instead by armed men firing a range of rubber and metal bullets. Stek speaks to one of the eyewitnesses.)

Others, including a Bentley and a Range Rover, are being held by a private company that goes by the misleading name of "Anti-Corruption Committee" (no relation to the government's National Anti-Corruption Committee) that has refused to hand over the cars to protesters guarding Mezhyhirya. Only seven cars -- including two expensive armored models -- have been returned to the former president's guarded estate.

You can read the full report (in Ukrainian) here.
11:13 10.3.2014
11:10 10.3.2014

17:48 9.3.2014
Barring major developments, we are finished live-blogging for March 9.
17:10 9.3.2014
OSCE representative describes circumstances under which unarmed international mission, invited by the Ukrainian authorities, was denied entry into the Crimean Peninsula on March 8 in this Telegraph video report.
16:53 9.3.2014
Itar-Tass reports:

Russian television channels have launched broadcasts in Crimea on frequencies which were used by Ukrainian television companies prior to stopping all broadcasts in the autonomy's territory on Sunday morning.

Russia's Channel One, Russia-24 TV news channel, NTV, TNT, STS and Russia 1 will now run their programmes on frequencies that were used by Ukrainian television companies, which stopped all broadcasts in the autonomy's territory on Sunday morning.

The Crimean authorities have not issued any official comments on the channel change. Ordinary people polled in the streets of Simferopol told Itar-Tass that they had nothing against the disappearance of the Ukrainian channels whose coverage of the events in Crimea under the current circumstances had been one-sided.

"Like many Ukrainian media outlets, they are not telling the truth," one respondent told Itar-Tass.
16:45 9.3.2014
A tense standoff between pro-Russia protestors and police inside the Lugansk regional administration building:

16:42 9.3.2014
More footage from Lugansk regional adminstration building after it was stormed by pro-Russia protestors. Shows police being led out single file.
16:31 9.3.2014
Ukrayinskaya Pravda quoting Center for Military and Political Investigations head Dmytro Tymchuk as saying that "representatives of the self-proclaimed Crimean authorities" have ordered Ukrainian troops at a missile-defense regiment in Yevpatoriya (about 70 kilometers north of Sevastopol on Crimea's western coast) to "lay down their weapons" by 6 p.m. local time, or "a storming of the installation will be carried out."

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