A priest stands in front of a hospital destroyed after shelling between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, Ukraine, on January 19.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

January 20, 2015 05:05 CET

Final Summary For January 20

-- A military spokesman says Ukrainian soldiers on January 20 came under attack from Russian regular forces in the north of the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.

-- Germany's foreign minister says he and his counterparts from Ukraine, Russia, and France will meet on January 21 in Berlin in a bid to de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

-- The chief of Russian gas giant Gazprom says Ukraine's discount "winter price" for natural gas will end on April 1. Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller said in a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that the price for Kyiv would be set in accordance with a long-standing contract, one Kyiv has long sought to change.

-- Russia says a European Union decision to keep sanctions against Russia in place shows the EU is not ready to change an "unfriendly course" toward Moscow. The EU's decision "only confirms the fact that the EU is still not ready to alter its unfriendly course or to give an objective assessment of the Kyiv authorities' actions," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

-- A Georgian man fighting on the Ukrainian side in the conflict in Ukraine has been killed in combat near the Donetsk airport, according to relatives. Media reports in Georgia quote members of Tamaz Sukhiashvili's family as saying he was killed in a battle near the bitterly contested airport on January 17.

-- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed deep concern over what it says is the "escalation" of violence between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine over the past two weeks. In a statement, the ICRC said the fighting in and around the city of Donetsk was killing civilians and "preventing" its team from carrying out its humanitarian work.

-- An explosion near a courthouse in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has wounded 14 people, four of them seriously.

-- Russia says Kyiv is trying to solve the crisis in eastern Ukraine through military force and that could lead to "irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood." Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin spoke to Interfax news agency as Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of ignoring appeals for a cease-fire to be respected.

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

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Ukraine's prime minister vows Crimea will be returned:

Ukraine's prime minister has suggested that Kyiv is unlikely to see the return of Russian-annexed Crimea soon, but vowed the peninsula will be returned to Ukraine one day.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk told reporters on December 30 during an end-of-year press conference in Kyiv that if the current generation of Ukrainians does not get Crimea back under Kyiv's control, "then our children or grandchildren will."

Yatsenyuk said there is no "quick and easy answer" to the question of how Ukraine can get back the Black Sea region, which was annexed by Russia in March.

The Ukrainian prime minister also said bilateral trade between Ukraine and Russia dropped by 50 percent in 2014 and that, "very soon," Russia will no longer be Ukraine's top trade partner.

Yatsenyuk blamed Moscow for the decline in trade, saying it "has never observed and is not observing a single bilateral agreement, including in the economic field." (UNIAN, Interfax)

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This ends our live-blogging for December 30. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.

07:41 31.12.2014

Merkel vows a united EU front on Ukraine:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to maintain a strong and united European position against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

Merkel said in a December 30 early release of her New Year's address to Germans that Europe "cannot and will not accept the purported right of the strong who violate international law."

She says in her speech that Europe in 2014 had witnessed a nation's right to self-determination threatened.

Merkel, who has spoken frequently with Russian President Vladimir Putin since Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March, said such a right is a foundation of the "European peaceful order."

She added that Europe wants security "together with Russia, not against Russia."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will meet with Putin, Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande on January 15 in Kazakhstan to discuss peace efforts between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists. (AFP and "The Guardian")

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Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)