This ends our live blogging for February 15. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the Defense Ministry (click to enlarge):
Ukraine to push for cabinet revamp as another reformer quits, Bloomberg reports:
The political crisis roiling Ukraine’s post-revolution leaders is coming to a head after the International Monetary Fund threatened to cut off aid and another top reformer quit. If efforts to revamp the cabinet fail, the risk is early elections.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is set to report to parliament this week on government performance, with proposed personnel changes to follow. While President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to “reboot” the cabinet and jump-start reforms, two small coalition parties want the premier to step down and one has called for a snap ballot. Adding to friction, a senior Ukrainian prosecutor resigned Monday, accusing his boss of graft. His exit follows that of the economy minister this month amid similar accusations.
Poroshenko and his team were brought to power after a popular uprising with a mission to bring European levels of transparency to the former Soviet republic after decades of misrule. While much of their two years in office was spent tackling a recession and a pro-Russian insurgency that’s killed 9,000 people, voters and Ukraine’s foreign backers are fed up with delays in fighting corruption. The hryvnia has lost 10.5 percent this year.
“I don’t think the reshuffle is enough,” Lutz Roehmeyer, director of fund management at Landesbank Berlin GmbH, said by e-mail. “Early elections are unfortunately still possible. Foreign investors thought that this is the one and only chance to reform the country but now it seems that Ukraine falls back into old political behavior.”
Crimea's prosecutor seeks closure of Tatars' Mejlis:
The Kremlin-backed prosecutor of Crimea, Natalya Poklonskaya, has filed a request with the territory's Supreme Court to ban the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body, the Mejlis.
Poklonskaya signed the request to brand the Mejlis "an extremist organization" on February 15, Russian news agencies reported.
Established in 1991 and legalized by the Ukrainian government in 1999, the Mejlis has been known as an organ that addressed issues related to Crimean Tatars to Kyiv and international bodies.
The majority of Crimean Tatars opposed Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
On February 11, Russian authorities that control Crimea arrested several Crimean Tatars on suspicion of belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni political organization that is banned across Central Asia and Russia.
Crimean Tatar activists rejected the charges, saying that they were politically motivated. (TASS, Interfax)
In the latest uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine, heavy weapons fire was heard early on February 13 near the Maryinka checkpoint, west of the city of Donetsk. Amid the rising tensions, Ukrainian government troops near the Black Sea coast conducted heavy military drills. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
