Here's a video from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on the blockade at the de facto border with Crimea:
Hundreds of Crimean Tatars have blocked roads and prevented supplies from reaching Crimea via Ukraine. They want Ukrainian companies to stop trading with Crimea as a way to protest the peninsula's annexation by Russia last year.
President Petro Poroshenko wants to raise the conscription age from 18 to 20, reports the RFE/RL Ukrainian Service. He guaranteed that recruits would not immediately be sent to Donbas.
“It has to be a formed person, who within one year maximum -- maybe less -- will learn military affairs in order to defend the homeland with weapons in hand if necessary. This person will be educated, trained, fired at,” said Poroshenko.
Here's an update from our news desk:
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has called on Russia to withdraw heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine.
Stoltenberg was speaking to reporters near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on September 21.
He said the drop in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed rebels since the start of September was encouraging, but described the situation as "very fragile."
"The heavy weapons are still there,” he said. “They continue to support the separatists."
Kyiv and the West say Russia has sent troops and weapons to fuel the separatist conflict that has killed more than 7,900 people in Ukraine's east since April 2014. Russia denies the charges.
Stoltenberg started a two-day visit on September 21, his first trip to Ukraine as NATO chief, in a show of support for Kyiv's pro-Western government.
(AFP, Reuters)
