Here's another item from our news desk that will be of interest to Ukraine watchers:
Ukraine Returns Stolen Italian Masterpieces To Verona Art Museum
Ukraine returned 17 masterpieces valued at 17 million euros to Italy on December 21 after they were stolen by masked, armed robbers from a Verona art museum last year.
Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini traveled to Kyiv to retrieve the paintings -- which included works by Rubens, Tintoretto, Bellini, and Mantegna -- and said the paintings sustained only a few scratches.
"It was an ugly story that became a beautiful story," he said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko handed over the paintings to Franceschini in a ceremony in Kyiv.
The paintings were recovered in May by Ukrainian border guards who intercepted them on a small island on the Dniester River during an attempt to smuggle them into Moldova.
They were stolen by three armed robbers in November 2015 from the Castelvecchio Museum, where they will be displayed again after being restored.
A guard at the museum, Pasquale Silvestri Riccardi, was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison earlier this month. Five others were also convicted, including Riccardi's Moldovan girlfriend.
Two Moldovans are on trial in their home country for the thefts.
Based on reporting by AP and dpa
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this item that's just been issued by our news desk:
Report: Russian Hackers Tracked Ukrainian Artillery Units
A Russian hacking group known as Fancy Bear has likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units, a new report says.
The malware was able to retrieve communications and some locational data from infected devices from late 2014 through 2016, the Virginia-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said in the report released on December 22.
It said the intelligence would have likely been used to strike against the artillery in support of Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The malware used to track Ukrainian artillery units was a variant of the kind used to hack into the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the presidential election this year, said CrowdStrike cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch.
CrowdStrike was hired to investigate the DNC hack, which it has attributed to Fancy Bear.
The firm has also found evidence that the hacking group was tied to the Russian state, which Moscow has denied.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
This ends our live blogging for December 21. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.