We are now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again in the morning to follow all the latest developments. Until then, you can keep up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
Good morning. We'll get the live blog rolling with this item that was filed overnight by our news desk:
Ill Treatment Of Police Suspects Still Common In Ukraine, EU Report Says
A new report from the Council of Europe finds that, despite significant efforts in Ukraine to adopt European human right standards, law enforcement bodies in the country continue to treat suspects badly.
"The problem of ill treatment still exists and has a systematic nature," said the report, which was released on May 4 as part of the European Union's and council's Partnership for Good Governance Project aimed at strengthening human rights in the former Soviet country.
The report said the principle reason for what it called "ill treatment by police" in Ukraine was an "established investigative practice which requires a suspect's confession as the starting point" for a criminal investigation.
It said the practice of first obtaining confessions from suspects -- "often extracted in an illegal manner" -- is "widely spread and supported" by police so they can "present better investigative statistics."
Once the confessions are extracted, the report said, the "inadmissible evidence" is "quite often accepted in court proceedings," perpetuating the rights violations in the legal system.
The report also found shortcomings in Ukrainian law that contribute to the ill treatment of suspects, including a "lack of a functional independent institution responsible for investigating" rights violations by police.
Here's what seems to be a photo of the town council brawl in Nikopol, which we reported on yesterday: