Good morning. We'll get the live blog rolling today with some of the tweets that caught our eye overnight:
Some solidarity from Minsk...
We are now closing the live blog for today. Until we resume again tomorrow morning, you can keep up with all our other Ukrainian coverage here.
RFE/RL's Christopher Miller has written an exhaustive profile of Ukrainian tycoon and power broker Viktor Medvedchuk, whom critics have dubbed the "Prince of Darkness":
Behind The Scenes In Ukraine, Ties To Putin Help Power Broker Pull Strings
KYIV -- More than a decade ago, Viktor Medvedchuk became known as the "Gray Cardinal" because his low profile masked unparalleled clout in the halls of power in Ukraine.
These days, detractors have another nickname for the millionaire tycoon and backroom politician with close personal ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin: they call him the Prince of Darkness.
A behind-the-scenes force in Ukrainian politics ever since Leonid Kuchma's presidency, when he served as chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, Medvedchuk holds no prominent post today -- and he says he doesn't want one. In a recent interview, he told RFE/RL he feels more "free" and effective without the confines of political office.
But his outsize influence has been thrown into relief again by the upheaval that has hit Ukraine since protesters drove a Moscow-friendly president from power in February 2014. Russia responded by seizing Crimea and fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine, setting off a war between Kyiv and Russia-backed separatists that has killed more than 9,500 people.
With ties in tatters, Ukraine's new, pro-Western leadership appointed Medvedchuk that June to act as a lead arbiter in dealings with Russia. The hope was that the Kremlin connections of a man who has Putin as the godfather of his daughter would be helpful -- particularly in negotiating prisoner exchanges.
But Medvedchuk's Kremlin connections meant that, while the appointment was celebrated in Moscow, it was met with widespread concern and suspicion by the Ukrainian public.
More than two years later, that wariness has not gone away. Several Ukrainians who were jailed in Russia have returned home in swap deals, including the prominent former helicopter navigator Nadia Savchenko, but many others remain behind bars.
INFOGRAPHIC: Russia's Jailed Ukrainians
Meanwhile, the peace deal Medvedchuk helped forge for eastern Ukraine is in danger of falling apart. The cease-fire is in tatters, with increased fighting this summer stoking fears of a return to full-scale war. And political aspects of the Minsk accords, which were supposed to reintegrate separatist-held territory into Ukraine and restore Kyiv's control over its border with Russia by the end of 2015, have gone largely unfulfilled.
For many in Ukraine, questions about the motives of Medvedchuk have only been amplified.
Read the entire article here
Here's another item from our news desk:
Dueling Indictments As Russia, Ukraine Target Each Other's Military Leaders
Russia and Ukraine traded salvos this week with dueling criminal investigations against each other's top military brass, a new front in the ongoing conflict between the two countries.
Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko launched the opening legal hand grenade on August 22, announcing a probe into Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and 19 other Russian military and civilian officials.
Lutsenko said the officials are suspected of "committing especially serious crimes against the foundations of Ukraine's national and civil security, peace, and international law and order," adding that Kyiv plans to seek international warrants for their arrests.
Not be outdone, Russia's Investigative Committee returned fire on August 24, saying that a criminal investigation had been opened into Shoigu's Ukrainian counterpart, Stepan Poltorak, and other military officials.
They are accused of war crimes and violations of a 2015 cease-fire in the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas, according to a statement from the agency, Russia's top investigative body.
Fighting in parts of the Donbas has surged in recent weeks, with Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists exchanging mortar, artillery, and gunfire. Tensions there spiked earlier this month after Moscow said it had detained a group of Ukrainian saboteurs in Crimea, and large columns of military equipment were seen moving around the Ukrainian peninsula, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014.
Kyiv rejects Russian accusations of "provocations" in Crimea and war-torn eastern Ukraine.
The likelihood of either country putting the accused top officials on trial is virtually nil, though both nations allow for trials in absentia.
A lawmaker in Russia's upper house of parliament, meanwhile, suggested one way to further tweak Kyiv: by staging criminal proceedings against Ukrainian officials in areas of the Donbas territory controlled by separatist forces.
More than 9,500 people have been killed in the fighting, according to international observers, and tens of thousands have been displaced.