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An activist stops a lorry near the village of Chongar, in the Kherson region adjacent to Crimea.
An activist stops a lorry near the village of Chongar, in the Kherson region adjacent to Crimea.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (ARCHIVE)

Follow all of the latest developments as they happen.

Final Summary For September 21

-- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has called on Russia to withdraw heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine.

-- No trucks have passed through the administrative border from mainland Ukraine to Crimea overnight, according to Oleh Slobodyan, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s State Border Service.

-- Hundreds of pro-Kyiv activists from Crimea's Tatar community and other opposition activists are taking part in the blockade of roads from Ukraine to the Crimean peninsula to protest Russia's annexation of the region last year.

-- The German government has criticized Russia for not distancing itself from plans by Russian-backed separatists to hold local elections in eastern Ukraine without consulting Kyiv.

*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv

17:30 19.9.2015

17:29 19.9.2015

16:48 19.9.2015

Candidates are being registered for the local elections planned next month in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic:

13:32 19.9.2015

Here's another:

13:29 19.9.2015

Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:

12:27 19.9.2015

08:39 19.9.2015

NATO chief to visit Ukraine next week:

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will next week make his first visit to Ukraine to hold talks with top officials and launch a joint disaster-management exercise, the alliance says.

He will travel to Lviv and Kyiv on September 21 and September 22 to hold talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and the parliament speaker.

He will also attend a meeting of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.

Ukraine is a key Western partner, but not a member of the 28-nation military alliance.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said last week that "a number of strategic documents" would be approved, notably paving the way for NATO to open an embassy in Ukraine.

The "Ukraine 2015" exercise will be based on "a technological disaster scenario which will also affect the civil population and critical infrastructure elements" throughout Ukraine, NATO said on September 18.

NATO has responded sharply to the Ukraine crisis and Russia's annexation of Crimea by increasing its readiness posture and rotating troops and equipment through its ex-communist eastern members to ease their fears that Moscow might encroach on them. (AFP, dpa)

08:32 19.9.2015

Poroshenko signs order removing Western journalists from sanctions list:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed an order to revoke a ban on several journalists of British, Spanish, and German citizenship.

The journalists include BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg and producer Emma Wells, both British, as well as German reporter Michael Rutz, who writes for Die Zeit.

Two Spanish journalists, Antonio Pampliega and Angel Sastre, who disappeared in Syria in July and are believed kidnapped by the Islamic State group, were also taken off the ban list on September 18.

Poroshenko on September 16 had signed a decree to ban about 400 people, including dozens of foreign journalists, from entering Ukraine on the grounds that they posed a threat to national security.

Most of the journalists on the list were Russian, and the measure was widely seen as a response to coverage of pro-Russian separatists in the country's east, whom the government has outlawed as terrorists.

The BBC called the measure a "shameful attack on media freedom."

Poroshenko had assured British Ambassador Judith Gough in a meeting on September 17 that he would remove the BBC journalists from the list. (dpa, Interfax, TASS)

22:02 18.9.2015

That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Friday, September 18. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage. Thanks for reading.

21:47 18.9.2015

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