This ends our live blogging for January 15. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Russian Court Leaves Jailed Ukrainian Sailors In Pretrial Detention
By the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
MOSCOW -- A Moscow court has prolonged the pretrial detention of 20 of the 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russian forces who attacked three Ukrainian Navy vessels in the Black Sea in November.
In a series of rulings on January 15, the Lefortovo district court granted requests by the Russian Investigative Committee to keep commander Denys Hrytsenko, Security Service (SBU) officer Andriy Drach, and 15 sailors in jail until April 24.
The court ruled that three sailors will stay in pretrial custody until April 26.
On January 16, the court is expected to rule on an extension of the pretrial detentions of the four remaining Ukrainian sailors.
On January 15, as Russian security officers escorted some of the sailors from the courtroom during a break in the proceedings for lunch, some spectators chanted, "Glory to Ukraine!"
All 24 say they consider themselves prisoners of war.
Russia has held the Ukrainian sailors since its forces fired on, boarded, and then seized their vessels near the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, on November 25.
Moscow claims the Ukrainian vessels illegally entered Russian territorial waters near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia occupied and took over in 2014.
The sailors have been charged with illegal border crossing and face up to six years in prison if convicted.
The court rulings came five days after the European Union reiterated its call on Moscow to release the sailors and all other Ukrainians whom Brussels says have been “illegally detained” in Russia and Crimea.
The United States and other Western countries have also called for their release.
U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton said in December that there will be no substantial meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin while Moscow still holds the Ukrainian ships and sailors.
Russia moved swiftly to seize control over Crimea after Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was pushed from power in Kyiv by the pro-European Maidan protest movement in February 2014.
Putin's government sent troops without insignia to the peninsula, seized key buildings, took control of the regional legislature, and staged a referendum denounced as illegitimate by at least 100 countries at the UN.
Russia also fomented unrest and backed opponents of Kyiv in eastern Ukraine, where more than 10,300 people have been killed in the ensuing conflict since April 2014.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled in November 2016 that the fighting in eastern Ukraine is "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."
Here's an item from our news desk:
Russia's FSB Says It Deported Ukrainian Spy
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has deported a man it it says is an agent of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) who planned to collect information about Russian military forces in Crimea.
The FSB's directorate in the southwestern Voronezh region said on January 16 that Leonid Kaplun was detained while entering the region from neighboring Ukraine.
It said he was deported later in the day and barred from entering Russia for 20 years.
The FSB said that Kaplun, who it said worked at a transportation company and often visited Crimea, was not charged with espionage because he was not able to carry out his alleged mission. It did not say what that alleged mission was.
Kyiv and rights activists say Russia has jailed several Ukrainians on trumped-up, politically motivated charges since Moscow seized Crimea in 2014 and threw its support behind armed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In 2017, the European Parliament called on Russia to free more than 30 Ukrainian citizens who were in prison or other conditions of restricted freedom in Russia, Crimea, and parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia-backed separatists.
The list included Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, who was sentenced to 12 years in a high-security prison in June on espionage charges in Moscow, and filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is serving a 20-year sentence in a Russian prison after being convicted of plotting terrorist attacks in a trial supporters called absurd.
The list, which the parliament statement said was not complete, also included several leaders of the Crimean Tatar minority, which rights groups say has faced abuse and discrimination since Russia's takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula.