Russia's state-controlled gas giant, Gazprom, announces it will hike the price Ukraine pays for natural gas in the second quarter to $385.5 per 1,000 cubic meters, from a previous rate of $268.5. Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Aleksei Miller said in Moscow that Ukraine's unpaid gas debt stood at $1.7 billion as of today. The decision to raise the price by more than 40 percent ends a discount agreed before the political crisis in which Ukraine has ousted its Moscow-backed president and Russia has annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine.
07:521.4.2014
Police in Kyiv are reported to have detained a suspect in a shooting incident not far from Independence Square. According to local reports, three people were wounded in the shooting late last night, including a senior official in the mayor's office, Bogdan Dubass. The suspect is reported to be a member of the far-right nationalist Right Sector movement.
07:351.4.2014
RFE/RL correspondent Robert Coalson notes that political scientist Aleksandr Dugin -- a leading public proponent of the new Russian conservatism and head of the International Eurasian Movement -- has urged the closure or blocking of a list of "biggest bastard" media that includes RFE/RL, Radio Moskvy, "Novaya Gazeta," "Vedomosti," Dozhd TV, and on and on. It's on Dugin's Facebook page:
Here's politonline.ru sharing its criteria for ranking those media based on their level of "anti-Russian" sentiment, support for U.S. position, and support for the Ukrainian government and Euromaidan.
21:0631.3.2014
Barring major developments, that concludes our live-blogging for March 31.
20:3531.3.2014
Vitali Klitschko's UDAR party quotes Serhiy Kunitsyn, a former Crimean prime minister, as saying his son was detained by "separatist" forces at Simferopol's train station and possibly taken for questioning by Russian security service (FSB) officers. The report is being quoted by "Ukrayinska pravda."
20:0031.3.2014
Among the things that NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told RFE/RL today in Brussels, ahead of tomorrow's NATO foreign ministers meeting:
"We have agreed with Ukraine to strengthen our cooperation within our NATO-Ukraine partnership within the NATO-Ukraine Commission and tomorrow we will have a political level meeting in the NATO-Ukraine Commission and I expect assistance to be made as to how we can further develop our partnership with Ukraine."
19:1231.3.2014
Some Crimeans have appealed to Kyiv for support to ensure the continued publication of what's billed as the only Ukrainian-language newspaper in Crimea. The RFE/RL Ukrainian Service's Crimea website reports that there are fears among Ukrainian speakers on the peninsula that "Krymska Svitlytsya's" operations will be interrupted under the unrecognized Russian annexation.
A leader of ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea says closure would be "equivalent to the cessation of thought in Ukrainian Crimea."
The paper was launched in 1992 and shuttered in 2010 before reappearing six months later as an online publication.
18:5131.3.2014
Three broadcasters in the Donetsk region still have not complied with a court order that they suspend their retransmission of Russian broadcasts, our Ukrainian Service reports, quoting a senior official at the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine.
17:4631.3.2014
Reuters and AFP report that Russia's Defense Ministry says it is withdrawing a motorized infantry battalion from a region near Russia's western border with Ukraine. The ministry said the battalion had ended maneuvers in the southern Rostov region and was heading back to its base in the Samarra region on the Volga River. There was no information on the number of troops involved.
Earlier today, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said Russia appeared to be reducing the number of its troops on the border. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the reported reduction seemed to be "a small signal that the situation is becoming less tense."
Russia in the past month massed tens of thousands of soldiers on its border with Ukraine, raising concerns that after annexing Crimea it might invade other parts of Ukraine.
17:4231.3.2014
A Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman mocks Russia's suggestion that Kyiv must "federalize" Ukraine by saying Ukraine is prepared to provide Moscow with a proposal to federalize Russia and introduce five to 10 official languages.
