Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him he would not further escalate the Ukraine crisis in their marathon talks in the Kremlin a day earlier.

Macron’s remarks on a visit to Kyiv came after the Kremlin denied reports that he and Putin struck a deal on de-escalating the crisis. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “in the current situation, Moscow and Paris can’t be reaching any deals.”

DONETSK, Ukraine, Feb 7 (Reuters) - An influential separatist commander in eastern Ukraine has urged Russia to send 30,000 soldiers to reinforce rebel forces fighting in the breakaway Donetsk region and to operate new weapons systems he hopes Russia will supply.

The Kremlin did not immediately respond when asked to comment on the request by Alexander Khodakovsky, a former political leader in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic who now oversees a military unit.

DONETSK, February 3. /TASS/: The intelligence of the People’s Militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has information that the Ukrainian military command expects heavy casualties in its planned aggression in Donbass, Deputy Head of the DPR People’s Militia Eduard Basurin said on Thursday.

"It can be said already now that the command [of the Ukrainian armed forces] expects heavy losses among Ukrainian soldiers in an offensive," he said.

KYIV, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a decree on Tuesday to boost his armed forces by 100,000 troops over three years and raise soldiers' pay, but said this did not mean war with Russia was imminent.

Zelenskiy urged lawmakers to stay calm and avoid panic as he prepared to host the leaders of the Netherlands, Britain and Poland - all NATO members - as part of efforts to defuse tension with Russia and shore up international support for Kyiv.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The table tennis coach, the chaplain’s wife, the dentist and the firebrand nationalist have little in common except a desire to defend their hometown and a sometimes halting effort to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian.

The situation in Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from some of the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the border of Ukraine, feels particularly perilous. Ukraine’s second-largest city is one of its industrial centers and includes two factories that restore old Soviet-era tanks or build new ones.

KIEV, January 31. /TASS/: Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Monday said his country will fully comply with the Montreux Convention regarding the regime of the straits as tensions around Ukraine are mounting.

Ankara will also continue to reach out to Moscow and Kiev in a bid to help their relations to come back to normal, he said.

The regime of the straits, which the convention established to regulate the transit of warships, "benefits all sides," the minister said on TRT television. "Abandoning the convention isn’t under discussion," he said.

KIEV, January 29. /TASS/: The West is using Ukraine as a foothold in its standoff with Russia, Chairman of the Political Council of Ukraine’s Opposition Platform - For Life party Viktor Medvedchuk told the UkrLive TV channel on Saturday.

KYIV, Jan 29 (Reuters) - From Monday to Friday, Mykhaylo is a lawyer, Alexander is an IT programmer and Konstantin freelances in online advertising.

On Saturday, the three came together in an abandoned construction site on the outskirts of Kyiv to train as Ukrainian army reservists, ready to be called up in the event of any war breaking out with neighbouring Russia.

KYIV, Jan 28 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday did not rule out a full-blown war with Russia but said Ukraine was not a sinking Titanic and accused Washington and media of fuelling panic that weighed on the economy while there were "no tanks in the streets".

He spoke after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the United States and NATO had not addressed the Kremlin's main security demands in the East-West standoff over Ukraine, but that Moscow was ready to keep talking. 

KIEV, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- The police detained a Ukrainian National Guard serviceman who shot five people dead and wounded five others at a military factory in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky wrote on Facebook Thursday.

The 21-year-old soldier opened fire at people inside a guard house of the Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant at about 4 a.m. local time (GMT 0200) for unknown reasons.

Four servicemen and one civilian woman were killed in the incident and five other people were severely injured.