Poroshenko gives medal to Soros:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has awarded U.S. financier and billionaire philanthropist George Soros with Ukraine's Order of Liberty.
Poroshenko presented Soros the award, one of Ukraine's highest, in Kyiv on November 12.
"Your intense activities during recent years have extremely promoted the democratic change that we now have happening in Ukraine," Poroshenko told Soros.
He said Soros's International Renaissance Foundation had played a big role in the development of Ukraine's statehood in the past 25 years.
Soros, 85, said after receiving the award that it was a great honor for him personally and for the International Renaissance Foundation.
Soros's charitable organizations have given billions of dollars to countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with charities operating in some 25 countries. (Interfax, TASS)
ICC says no crimes against humanity at Maidan:
A preliminary probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC) suggests that Ukraine's security forces used "excessive and indiscriminate" force in the 2014 EuroMaidan protests but are not guilty of crimes against humanity.
ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a report released on November 12 that The Hague-based organization had opened a tentative investigation into the conflict.
The months-long pro-Western uprising began in November 2013 on Kyiv's Maidan Square and led to the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian government and the deaths of some 100 people, mostly protesters.
Bensouda said that "While these considerations tend to indicate that alleged crimes do not amount to crimes against humanity," she added that the ICC did find that "serious human rights abuses did occur" at Independence Square.
Bensouda said that although the attacks on the protesters constituted an "attack directed against a civilian population," there was "limited information...to support a conclusion that...it was either widespread or systematic."
She said the ICC's preliminary probe was continuing in the Russia-annexed Crimea and eastern Donbas region, where more than 7,900 people have been killed in fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine's parliament has accepted the ICC's jurisdiction to probe crimes committed on its territory from November 2013 onward. (AFP)
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, November 12. Check back here tomorrow morning for more of our continuing coverage.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry expects the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to thoroughly investigate violations of the Minsk agreements, it said in a statement.
"We expect that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission will urgently carry out a thorough investigation of violations of the Minsk agreement and asses them objectively.... We call on the international community to strengthen its influence on the Russian Federation to ensure strict adherence to a comprehensive ceasefire and unconditional implementation of the Minsk documents in full," the statement says.
According to the ministry, from November 1 through 11 separatists carried out more than 240 attacks along the dividing line. Sometimes they used 82-mm and 120-mm mortars that should have been withdrawn from the dividing line. In addition, the ministry claims, separatists attempted to storm Ukrainian positions close to Mayorske in the Donetsk region and Novozvanivka in the Luhansk region.
The EU's ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, has said that Ukraine shouldn’t expect immediate effects of the free-trade zone with the EU.
"I am very optimistic about what would happen in two, three, four years. I insist that it won’t happen on January 1, 2016. We have to build a foundation, start the engine and the result will follow," he said at a business forum in Kyiv.
The free-trade zone between Ukraine and the EU will take effect on January 1, 2016.