Ukraine Marks 23rd Independence Anniversary
Ukraine marks 23 years of independence on August 24 amid the ongoing crisis in the east of the country.
President Petro Poroshenko is due to preside over a parade in downtown Kyiv amid what are expected to be subdued celebrations.
The anniversary comes a day after hundreds of Russian aid trucks returned home from rebel-held eastern Ukraine.
Russia unilaterally sent hundreds of aid trucks into Ukraine through a rebel-held border point on August 22, saying it had lost patience with Ukraine’s delaying tactics, a move that Ukraine promptly described as an invasion.
By mid-afternoon on August 23, all the vehicles had returned to Russia, Paul Picard of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe told reporters in the Russian town of Donetsk.
An AP reporter on the Ukrainian side of the border was able to look inside about 40 of the tractor-trailers and confirmed they were empty.
Russia said the trucks carried only food, water, generators and sleeping bags to the hard-hit rebel stronghold of Luhansk.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks in Kyiv with Ukrainian officials and expressed hope for a peaceful solution to the conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 lives.
Diplomats say Merkel came to Kyiv with two objectives: primarily to show support for Kyiv but also to urge Poroshenko to be open to peace proposals when he meets Putin next week in the Belarus capital, Minsk.
Merkel said the standoff over Ukraine could be solved but only if control was tightened over the Ukraine-Russia border across which, the West alleges, Russia has been funneling arms to help a separatist rebellion.
She proposed a deal between Kyiv and Moscow on monitoring the nearly 2,000 kilometer border by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Hours before Merkel’s plane landed in Kyiv, there was heavy artillery bombardment in Donetsk, the main separatist stronghold on the east of Ukraine, near the border with Russia.