Fire Breaks Out At Ukrainian TV Station
A fire broke out at a Ukrainian television station in Kyiv, although nobody was hurt in the incident on September 4.
TV Inter's headquarters caught fire after a group of around 20 protesters gathered outside the building and set tires afire and threw them in the building.
Kyiv police official Andrei Krishenko said witnesses believed a smoke bomb had been thrown into the building.
Authorities said they had arrested six people in connection with the fire.
The station continued broadcasting from mobile facilities outside the building.
The station is widely regarded by many Ukrainians as being pro-Russia. The affiliation of the protesters was not clear.
A conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops has killed more than 9,500 people.
Based on reporting by AP and Interfax
Merkel, Putin Talk Syria, Ukraine On Sidelines Of G20 Summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had a face-to-face meeting for nearly two hours late on September 4 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said the two leaders discussed the Syrian conflict, especially the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation in Aleppo, which is under siege by Syrian government forces.
Seibert said Putin and Merkel also spoke "very concretely" about the conflict in Ukraine and how to implement the Minsk agreement, a cease-fire and peace plan aimed at resolving the war in eastern Ukraine.
It was the first meeting between Merkel and Putin in several months. Relations have been strained since Russia's forcible annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
A peace deal co-signed by France and Germany in February 2015 in Minsk was meant to end the fighting. But the more than two-year-old war has now killed more than 9,500 people as the sides trade blame for violating the truce.
Based on reporting by dpa and Reuters
This ends our live blogging for September 4. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Crimean Tatar activist says psychiatric detainment endangers health:
A noted Crimean Tatar activist who has been forced into a psychiatric hospital in Russian-occupied Crimea says the conditions he’s facing are a threat to his physical health.
Ilmi Umerov, the former deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body, the Mejlis, was charged with separatism in May after he made public statements opposing Moscow's seizure of the peninsula from Ukraine.
In August, he was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric clinic for a month of assessment tests.
Umerov, 59, spoke to a Reuters reporter who gained access to the hospital in Simferopol, where he’s being held.
Umerov, whose relatives and lawyers say he suffers from diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and heart problems, said he had been forced to live in squalid, crowded conditions that endangered his health.
"With this bouquet [of ailments], to be in such conditions is of course dangerous," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
He added that on his fourth day at the clinic he collapsed and lost consciousness.
He also said that he had been barred from speaking to journalists.
Human Rights Watch has urged the Russian-backed authorities in Crimea to drop the charges against Umerov and provide him with necessary medical treatment.
The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center has called the case against Umerov "illegal and politically motivated."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has compared Umerov's detention to the Soviet-era practice of holding dissidents in psychiatric hospitals. (Reuters, AFP)
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (click to expand):
