Ukrainian activist Oleksandr Kolchenko is serving a 10-year sentence in Russia on terror charges that human rights groups say are politically motivated. He was convicted in 2015 alongside Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov after Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. During a visit by an observation mission, Sentsov described the time he's spent in an isolation cell, as well as the letters of support he's received from inside and outside Russia. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service and Current Time)
-- EDITOR'S NOTE: We have started a new Ukraine Live Blog as of August 17, 2019. You can find it here.
-- A court in Moscow has upheld a lower court's decision to extend pretrial detention for six of the 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russian forces along with their three naval vessels in November near the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
-- The U.S. special peace envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, says Russian propaganda is making it a challenge to solve the conflict in the east of the country.
-- Two more executives of DTEK, Ukraine's largest private power and coal producer, have been charged in a criminal case on August 14 involving an alleged conspiracy to fix electricity prices with the state energy regulator, Interfax reported.
-- A Ukrainian deputy minister and his aide have been detained after allegedly taking a bribe worth $480,000, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said on Facebook.
*Time stamps on the blog refer to local time in Ukraine