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A portrait of slain separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko hangs outside the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on September 2.
A portrait of slain separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko hangs outside the Donetsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on September 2.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

-- EDITOR'S NOTE: We have started a new Ukraine Live Blog as of September 3, 2018. You can find it here.

-- Tens of thousands of people gathered on September 2 in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine to mourn a top rebel leader who was recently killed in a bomb attack.

-- Prominent Ukrainian historian Mykola Shityuk has been found dead in his home city of Mykolaiv, police said on September 2.​

-- Ukraine says it has imprisoned the man it accused of being recruited by Russia’s secret services to organize a murder plot against self-exiled Russian reporter and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko.

-- Ukraine and Russia are trading blame for the killing of a top separatist leader in eastern Ukraine.

-- Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the head of the head of the breakaway separatist entity known as the Donetsk People’s Republic, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in Donetsk on August 31.

-- The United States is ready to widen arms supplies to Ukraine to help build up the country's naval and air defense forces in the face of continuing Russian support for eastern separatists, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine told The Guardian.

-- The spiritual head of the worldwide Orthodox Church in Istanbul has hosted Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill for talks on Ukraine's bid to split from the Russian church, a move strongly opposed by Moscow.

*Time stamps on the blog refer to local time in Ukraine

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That concludes our live-blog for today. Please join us again tomorrow for more coverage of Ukraine.

09:40 19.9.2017

Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with the latest news on Pavlo Hryb (frpm RFE/RL's news desk):

Kyiv Diplomats Visit Ukrainian Teenager Hryb Held In Russia

Pavlo Hryb (file photo)
Pavlo Hryb (file photo)

Ukrainian diplomats have visited a Ukrainian teenager held in Russian custody on terrorism-related charges for the first time since his arrest.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maryana Betsa wrote on Twitter that Ukrainian consuls visited Pavlo Hryb on September 18.

Betsa said that Ukrainian physicians have not been allowed to examine Hryb.

"We demand doctors' access," she wrote.

Hryb's father, Ihor Hryb, said earlier that his son has a medical condition, which he did not specify, and needs special treatment and drugs on a regular basis to avoid a possible hemorrhage.

Hryb, 19, went missing in late August after he traveled to Belarus to meet a woman he met online in what his relatives believe was a trap set by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

The FSB subsequently informed Kyiv that Hryb was held in a detention center in Russia on suspicion of abetting terrorism, without giving any details.

Ihor Hryb has said his son was openly critical of Russian interference in Ukraine on social media.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on September 8 protested Hryb's detention and demanded that Moscow grant consular access to the teenager "and explain in detail all of the reasons for his detention."

The ministry condemned what it called Russia's "persecution of Ukrainian citizens in Russia and elsewhere, groundless detentions of Ukrainians, violation of their rights to have fair trials, and their convictions on fabricated and politically motivated charges."

Kyiv and Moscow have been locked in a standoff over Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and Moscow's backing of armed separatists in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

With reporting by UNIAN
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