Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (ARCHIVE)

An excerpt:

KYIV, Ukraine — Former platoon commander Vitaliy Yatsyk remains impressively calm when he remembers the day he says Russian tanks killed scores of his comrades outside a sleepy railway hub in eastern Ukraine.

The ambush was the deadliest of surprises: As far as the battered and encircled Ukrainian troops understood, they were to be granted safe passage by the Russians — a so-called “green corridor” — back to friendly territory after days of fierce fighting.

But it didn’t turn out that way.

Instead, tanks, artillery and machine gun fire blew apart their convoy as it sped away in panic, leaving bodies scattered and machinery burning across desolate fields and dirt roads.

“It ended up as a corridor of death,” Yatsyk says.