That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, January 19, 2017. Thanks for reading and take care.
The Ukraine Live Blog is taking a break. We will resume our coverage of the crisis on Sunday, January 22.
Good morning. Welcome back to the Ukraine Live Blog, which took a short break over the last few days. To get things rolling again, here's an item that's just been issued by our news desk:
Ukraine's Poroshenko Says No To Early Elections
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that "some politicians in Kyiv and Moscow" are pushing to force Ukraine to hold early parliamentary elections in order "to destabilize our country."
Speaking on the occasion of Unity Day on January 22, Poroshenko said he would use all legal means to counter such efforts.
The president also said there would be no changes to the constitution until "security issues" are settled in the eastern Donbas region.
"In a difficult dialogue, we persuaded our foreign allies that any step toward political settlement must be preceded by obvious and indisputable progress on security issues," he said.
Poroshenko also chided politicians who seem open to the idea of renouncing Ukraine's sovereignty in Donbas, saying they had no right to "scatter" the territories gathered by previous generations.