Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with a couple of things that caught our eye overnight:
And here's a tweet from the deputy head of Ukraine's investment promotion office:
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Saturday, February 11, 2017. Check back here tomorrow for more of our ongoing coverage.
Prominent Ukrainian Author Seized In Belarus, Ordered To Leave
By RFE/RL's Belarus Service
MINSK -- A popular Ukrainian writer says he was seized by Belarusian security agents in the middle of the night while visiting Minsk and ordered to leave the country.
Serhiy Zhadan said on February 11 that he was in Minsk to attend a poetry festival but was ordered to leave on the basis of a 2015 Russian entry ban that accused him of "involvement in terrorism."
Zhadan said police and Belarusian KGB agents entered his hotel room while he was sleeping at about 2 a.m. on February 11 and took him into custody.
Zhadan, an acclaimed novelist and poet whose books have been widely translated, said nothing was explained to him initially by the authorities who detained him.
He said he was taken to a jail in Minsk, where he spent the rest of the night in a cell.
Zhadan took part in pro-European protests in Kyiv that led to the ouster of Ukraine's Moscow-backed president in 2014.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
EU's Juncker Promises Ukraine 600 Million Euros In Aid
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker says the European Union will give Ukraine 600 million euros ($640 million) to bolster government finances.
Juncker, speaking on February 10 after talks with Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman, said the country had pressed ahead with reforms despite difficult conditions and that the EU should now make good on its aid pledges.
"We have a strategic partnership with Ukraine and our future relations will develop along these lines," he told reporters after the meeting.
Hroysman said it was very important to send a strong signal to Ukrainians that ties with the EU were "a positive result and would improve their lives."
Juncker also said he expects that visa liberalization for citizens of Ukraine, long sought by Kyiv, would be in place by the middle of the year.
The EU and Ukraine have signed an Association Agreement and a free-trade deal to bolster Ukraine's struggling economy, with Brussels offering 3.4 billion euros in loans to help Kyiv balance public spending.
The EU has so far handed over 2.2 billion euros, with disbursements tied to progress on political and economic reforms.
Western governments and analysts say that swifter, more thorough reforms would reduce the influence of Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and backs separatists in a war that has killed more than 9,750 people since April 2014.