A tweet on tomorrow's local election from the U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv:
Good morning. We'll start our live blog today with this Ukraine-related item from our news desk:
Flights between Ukraine and Russia will be banned starting this weekend despite a last-ditch effort by senior Russian officials to prevent the ban, Ukraine's infrastructure minister said on October 24.
"From October 25, there will not be air traffic with Russian cities," Minister Andrei Pivovarsky told Russian news agencies.
Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Brussels on October 23 as part of a Moscow-led effort to prevent the Kyiv-initiated ban on flights between the countries.
Russian Transportation Minister Maksim Sokolov told reporters that his country would continue to push for the bans to be removed, arguing that Ukraine should go along with this because 75 percent of air travelers between Russia and Ukraine are Ukrainian.
Ukraine announced late last month that it would ban flights from Russia starting on October 25. Russia quickly retaliated with a tit-for-tat ban that would go into effect on the same day.
Ukraine made the announcement despite several weeks of relative calm in the country's two eastern-most regions, which have been at the center of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists.
(dpa, TASS)
Barring any major developments, that ends the live blogging for today.
Latest from our news desk:
Russian-backed rebels in Donetsk said on October 23 they had banned the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity group from operating in the separatist region in eastern Ukraine for unspecified violation of local laws.
A representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying: "I can confirm the decision to strip its (MSF's) accreditation."
MSF director of operations Bart Janssens called the decision disturbing and "vague."
Janssens was quoted by AFP as saying the group was "extremely worried."
"MSF is the largest player in the region and now we will have to stop people's treatment," Janssens told AFP.
According to Ukrainian media reports, MSF representatives mostly worked in Donetsk's tuberculosis hospital and prisons.
The rebels said on October 23 that they had spared the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Czech Republic's People in Need -- two other earlier targets of alleged violations.
MSF and nine other aid organizations were kicked out of the neighboring rebel region of Luhansk late September.
The Luhansk separatists accused MSF of "illegally storing psychotropic medication" that lacked proper registration in either Russia or Ukraine.
MSF denies the allegation.
According to UN figures at least 8,000 people were killed and 18,000 injured in the Ukrainian conflict.