A Russian court in Donetsk has ordered a closed-door hearing in the questioning of Luhansk separatist leader Igor Plotnitsky in the case of Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko. The prosecution says Plotnitsky is afraid for his life. Spectators have been ordered to leave the courtroom.
The court also forbade Savchenko’s lawyers to "retell his testimony word for word," Mark Feygin, one of the lawyers, tweeted.
A few minutes later he tweeted a photo of Plotnitsky in court.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
Happening in Kyiv:
Three Ukrainian servicemen were wounded over the past 24 hours in Donbas, said presidential military spokesman Andriy Lysenko. One man was wounded as a result of hostilities, while two others injured themselves on trip-wires.
According to Lysenko, yesterday fighting only took place in Donetsk Oblast on the Bakhmut highway and north of it.
At the same time, the "Donetsk People's Republic" said on its websites that the Ukrainian military violated the cease-fire regime 10 times on November 18, while the "Luhansk People's Republic" published no information about the military situation in the region.
Former President Viktor Yanukovych himself initiated the 10 antiprotest laws known as "dictator laws" for imposing restrictions on freedoms of speech and assembly that came into force on January 17, 2014, Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office said in a briefing.
"The immediate initiative and orders to adopt these laws came from the former president, who was informed of the suspicion," said the prosecutor-general’s head of special investigations, Serhiy Horbatyuk.
"Titushky," the paid thugs who provoked violence during Maidan, received 90,000 rounds of ammunition and 408 firearms from former law enforcement authorities on the orders of former Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, according to Horbatyuk.
The former government "deliberately crossed all boundaries and were ready to use these weapons on a large scale," Horbatyuk added.