From our news desk:
Ukraine has reported its first combat death since a new cease-fire with Russia-backed separatists went into effect on September 1.
"In the past day, as a result of military activities, one of our soldiers died and two were wounded," Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on September 9.
Lysenko said the casualties were suffered during an attack by separatists around the eastern town of Mariinka near Donetsk.
He added that the separatists also violated the truce by shelling the vicinity of the port city of Mariupol.
Earlier this week, the separatists claimed the death of one its fighters.
Fighting between government forces and separatists has killed more than 9,500 people in Ukraine's east since April 2014.
In late August, the warring sides agreed their latest truce to coincide with the new school year.
Based on reporting by AFP and Interfax
Savchenko: Russia Sanctions Must Remain
By RFE/RL
BRUSSELS -- Nadia Savchenko, the former Ukrainian military officer who spent nearly two years in a Russian prison, says it is too early to lift sanctions against Russia because the situation in Crimea and eastern Ukraine is unchanged.
The comments by Savchenko, made to RFE/RL in Brussels, came amid growing talk in some Western capitals about easing the economic measures imposed following Moscow's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in 2014, and the subsequent insurgency it backed in the region known as the Donbas.
Savchenko, who currently is a member of Ukraine's parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said September 9 that the European and U.S. sanctions against Moscow had been introduced "under certain conditions" that have never been met.
"Crimea is still occupied, Donbas is occupied by Russia," Savchenko said. "I think that it is too early [to lift sanctions] because the usurper did not learn its lesson yet."
Savchenko, a military aviator, was captured in June 2014, and put on trial in Russia, charged with the killing of two Russian reporters covering the war.
Freed in May as part of a prisoner swap, she returned to a hero's welcome, and has spoken out regularly, calling for direct peace talks with Russia-backed separatists in the east.
More than 9,400 people have been killed in the fighting since it erupted in April 2014, according to United Nations figures.