Live Blog: Crisis In Ukraine (Archive)

AP video from within the ranks of the "Vostok Battalion" trying to seize the airport.

Dramatic Reuters footage from the fighting at Donetsk airport yesterday:

Pro-Kyiv "Information Resistance" blogger Dmitry Tymchuk highlights some of Ukraine's problems in policing its border with Russia. His conclusions are based on a meeting with border officials, he says, and the situation will be further assessed in "the coming days."

He notes on Facebook that there is rampant corruption -- many of the residents of Ukraine's border region with Russia "feed off the border" and therefore have a financial interest in seeing a lack of law enforcement there: "If a family, for instance a father and brother, for many years engaged in cross-border smuggling, it is difficult to expect that they will be honest." The fact that many of the border guards themselves are from that same community exacerbates the problem.

The policing of the border is underfunded, understaffed, and otherwise ill equipped, he adds.

To make matters worse, he says, the border services don't interact well with counterterrorism forces, citing examples when counterterrorism forces denied border guards' requests for assistance due to a lack of resources.

The "Friendship" Ice Palace burning in Donetsk this morning.