That concludes are Ukraine in Crisis live blogging for today. Please join us again tomorrow.
From the RFE/RL Newsroom:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he believes Washington may be able to consider lifting sanctions it imposed on Russia over its involvement in violence in Ukraine later this year if Moscow complies with the Minsk peace deal.
In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, Kerry said that he and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had meet this week in the Swiss resort with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to help ensure full implementation of the agreements.
Kerry said, "with effort and with bona-fide legitimate intent to solve the problem on both sides, it is possible in these next months to find those Minsk agreements implemented and to get to a place where sanctions can be appropriately -- because of the full implementation -- removed."
Washington links a lifting of the sanctions to full implementation of the Minsk accords, which were agreed to last February by Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany after the collapse of a cease-fire between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.
The terms of the deal provide for a cease-fire, a pullback of heavy weapons, prisoner exchanges, local elections in rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine, and greater autonomy for these regions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview this month the sanctions were "severely harming Russia."
The sanctions have reportedly shaved about 1.5 percent off of Russian economic output in 2015.
Based on reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg.com
From the RFE/RL newsroom:
An outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu virus has killed 26 people in the territories currently controlled by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, Russian news agencies reported on January 22.
The agencies quoted an unidentified representative of the separatists as saying all schools have been closed until January 30 to help curb the number of swine-flu cases.
The Ukrainian Health Ministry confirmed on January 19 that H1N1 has killed 51 people across the country.
Ukrainian Health Minister Aleksandre Kvitashvili urged people not to panic, saying “We haven’t exceeded the epidemic threshold, and every year January is the peak of the flu season.”
Swine flu outbreak has caused deaths in Russia and other former Soviet republics, officials say.
Armenian officials said 18 people had died from swine flu since January 1, where school holidays were prolonged until February 1 and military personnel were ordered not to leave their units due to the outbreak.
Health officials in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, said on January 19 that five local residents died of the H1N1 virus, adding that more than 310 individuals had been hospitalized with symptoms of the disease.
Swine flu deaths were also reported in Georgia and Kazakhstan.
Based on reporting by TASS, Interfax, and RFE/RL's Armenian and Russian services