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.
Here's another item from our news desk:
Ukraine Parliament Passes Anticorruption Legislation
Ukrainian lawmakers have approved an anticorruption bill establishing public oversight over the assets of both senior and lower-level officials and their relatives.
Under the legislation adopted on March 15, they now have to file electronic declarations of their income and holdings, and face criminal liability for any inaccurate or falsified information.
The data will be open online to anyone's scrutiny.
The European Union has been pressing Ukraine to complete anticorruption reforms, and Kyiv hopes the move will pave the way for visa-free travel to EU countries this year.
Ukraine's visa-free bid has been a top goal of the Ukrainian government, which has had to tackle an economic and financial crisis and a conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the country's east.
Based on reporting by AFP and UNIAN
This is a potentially interesting development...
The Verkhovna Rada has apparently registered a draft resolution on the termination of diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation.
The draft Resolution authors are Oksana Korchynska, Yuriy Shukhevych-Bogdan, Oleg Petrenko and Vladimir Parasyuk – a politically mixed bag.
Unfortunately at the time of writing, this draft Resolution is not published on the Verkhovna Rada website, so it is unclear whether the proposed breaking of diplomatic ties also includes consular ties too. After the Russian actions in Georgia of 2008 diplomatic ties were cut – but consular offices were maintained in both nations.
This draft Resolution comes more than two years after the illegal annexation of Crimea, continuing war, and almost daily death in the Donbas, economic sanctions, tens of billions of US$ claims and counterclaims pending various international courts, cyber attacks, active measures etc., etc.
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