Here's another news item, courtesy of RFE/RL's Russian and Ukrainian services:
Crimean Tatar Leader Faces Trial On Russia-Controlled Peninsula
A Crimean Tatar leader who has criticized Russia's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula is expected to go on trial within weeks.
Ilmi Umerov, deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body, the Mejlis, said on Facebook that investigators from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) told his lawyers on March 1 that they had wrapped up their case.
Umerov's lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov, said defense attorneys were given a March 7 deadline to read the case materials -- which he said consisted of three 250-page volumes.
Kurbedinov said the trial will start in about a month.
Umerov, 59, was charged with separatism in May 2016, after he made public statements opposing Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.
He denies the charges, saying he has the right to express his opinions freely.
According to a new survey, Russians today are more proud of annexing Crimea than they are of space exploration or of Russian literature. RFE/RL's Brian Whitmore unpacks this startling news in today's Daily Vertical:
Ukraine Billionaire Vows to Fight Back After Separatists Seize Operations
A company controlled by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, said on March 2 that the seizure of some of its assets by Russia-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country is "unacceptable."
The March 1 move to seize dozens of coal mines and other enterprises, including a telecoms firm and a humanitarian organization funded by Akhmetov, followed an announcement by the separatists that they would take control of companies located on territory they hold in response to a road and rail blockade imposed more than a month ago by nationalist Ukrainian lawmakers and veterans of the ongoing war in the east.
The separatists want Ukrainian companies operating on their territory to register and pay taxes locally instead of to the government in Kyiv.
"We believe that private property is sovereign, and the demands of re-registration of our companies and payment of taxes to self-proclaimed DNR and LNR are unacceptable," Akhmetov's SCM Group said in a statement referring to the separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The SCM Group, which also provides heating, electricity and gas to millions of Ukrainians, said it is one of few links between the government-controlled areas and non-government controlled areas of Ukraine.
President Petro Poroshenko has denounced the move by the separatists as "another brutal and dreadful violation of international law."
Ukrainian military reports from the front:
A former Crimean official says the Russian state is forcing tourists to go to Crimea to prop up the annexed region's tourism industry: