Ukraine's Poroshenko to meet Macron in Paris:
By RFE/RL
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is due to meet his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris on June 26.
During his working visit, Poroshenko will also hold talks with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and Senate speaker Gerard Larcher, a statement on Portoshenko's presidential website said.
France, together with Germany, brokered the Minsk peace agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine in February 2015 in an attempt to put an end to the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow-backed separatists in the country's east.
The Minsk agreement called for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front lines, and constitutional reforms to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.
However, the fighting has recently intensified in eastern Ukraine.
The United Nations says more than 10,000 people have been killed during the conflict since it began in April 2014.
Poroshenko's visit to Paris comes after European Union leaders last week agreed to extend the bloc's economic sanctions against Russia by six months.
The sanctions were first imposed by Brussels in 2014 as a response to Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. (w/AFP, Interfax)
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Sunday, June 25. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
