Good morning. We'll get the live blog rolling today with a few tweets that caught our eye overnight:
We are now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again tomorrow morning to follow all the latest developments. Until then, you can keep up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
Another item from our news desk:
Poroshenko Signs Law Declaring December 25 Public Holiday
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed a law declaring December 25 a public holiday.
Poroshenko made the move on November 29, nearly two weeks after Ukrainian lawmakers adopted the legislation officially recognizing the day celebrated by Catholics and Protestants as Christmas Day.
January 7 will remain a public holiday in majority Orthodox Christian Ukraine.
About 9 percent of Ukraine's 42 million population is Catholic or Protestant.
Oleksandr Turchynov, Secretary of Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, described the vote in parliament on November 16 as "historic," saying it would allow Ukrainians to "distance ourselves from Moscow's calendar and Russian imperial standards."
Kyiv and Moscow have been locked in a bitter feud since Russia occupied and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region in March 2014.
Moscow has also provided political, military, and economic support to separatists who gained control over parts of eastern Ukraine, sparking a war that has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014.