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Good morning. We'll start the live blog with this item that came in overnight from our news desk:
Russia's Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal in the case of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who was jailed in August for 20 years on terrorism charges, which he and international rights groups call politically motivated.
Sentsov, a native of Crimea who opposed Russia's March 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula, was arrested in May of that year on suspicion of planning the fire-bombings of pro-Russian organizations on the Black Sea peninsula.
A Russian court convicted him on multiple terrorism charges on August 25 and sentenced him to 20 years in a maximum-security prison.
Sentsov, 39, has denied all charges against him, saying that a "trial by occupiers cannot be fair by definition."
His lawyer, Dmitry Dinze, said in a Facebook post that the Russian Supreme Court on November 24 will hear an appeal in the conviction of Sentsov and co-defendant Oleksandr Kolchenko, an activist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Dinze called the conviction of Sentsov by the North Caucasus District Military Court, located in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, "a hallmark of injustice and arbitrariness," Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported on November 24.
Dinze told TASS that he does not expect the court to alter Sentsov's conviction significantly, but that it may "slash a couple of years" off of his sentence.
"Then we'll be pressing for Sentsov's and Kolchenko's transfer to Ukraine to serve the remainder of their jail terms there," he said.
Such a transfer could be difficult to secure because the judges consider the two men to be citizens of Russia, Dinze said.
The prosecution of Sentsov and Kolchenko has been widely criticized as retaliation for their outspoken opposition to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
A UN resolution overwhelmingly asserted in 2014 that the peninsula remained part of Ukraine, although Russian authorities have installed their own institutions and exercise day-to-day control.
Kyiv and NATO have also accused Russia of direct military intervention in eastern Ukraine, where fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists has killed more than 7,900 people since April 2014.
Sentsov is an internationally acclaimed film director whose first feature film, Gamer, about a computer-game-obsessed teenager, was presented at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2012.
EU lawmakers in September urged Russia to release Sentsov and Kolchenko, calling their detentions a "blatant violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine" through "illegal kidnapping."
Icons of European cinema last week made a public plea to famed Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov, a staunch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to lobby for Sentsov’s release.
"It is our responsibility -- as filmmakers and as human beings -- to stand up for human rights and the freedom of speech. Please raise your voice and support us in our support of Oleg Sentsov," prominent members of the European Film Academy wrote to Mikhalkov in the November 20 letter.
The four signatories included Polish directors Agnieszka Holland and Andrzej Wajda, as well as German filmmakers Wim Wenders and Volker Schloendorff.
Separately, legendary Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski last week published a letter addressed to Mikhalkov in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborza, writing: "I believe that you do not think and feel differently [from] all the great artists from many countries who signed letters regarding our Ukrainian colleague to President Putin."
"The cruelty of [the] trial brings to mind the darkest judgments of the past of our common civilization and culture. I appeal to you and I beg you, as your Polish brother, to do something. Among all of us, you are the person closest to your president and the case," Olbrychski wrote.
(With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, TASS, and hollywoodreporter.com)
We are now closing the live blog for today. Until we resume again tomorrow morning, you can keep up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.