The largest Kharkov plant Electrotyazhmash ceases its work. The company has had problems for six months already. It will join the list of recently successful industries that Ukraine 'buried' over the past three years.

The Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Victor Kononenko stated that there were cases of the DPR journalists switching sides, however, he did not mention any names. He claimed that such defectors were not judged in Ukraine. On the other hand, we can name the journalists who were detained there and brought back to the Republic during the exchange of prisoners with great difficulty.

Ukrainian special services regularly publish materials on the detention of civilians allegedly involved in sabotage and recruited by the special services of the DPR and the LPR.

The European Union decided to allocate €50 million to the territories of Donbass controlled by Ukraine, believing that this initiative would support decentralization and could help to return the DPR and LPR back to Ukraine.

Ukraine's Internal Affairs Ministry reacted non-standard to the arrest by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) of the son of the minister of the law enforcement agency, Alexander Avakov. In an official statement, the police department accused the NABU leadership of the continuation of the "hybrid war" and the attempt to "restore the old corrupt system."

The Director of the Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Ella Libanova told the press that the return of Donbass would have an enormous economic price.

The Minister of Finance of Ukraine Alexander Danilyuk had recently said that the country was awaiting another tranche from the International Monetary Fund until the end of 2017. The Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman echoed claiming that the next tranche of financial assistance for Ukraine from the IMF of $1.9 billion would be postponed until the end of the year 2017.

Ukraine is hosting a concert tour of the US Air Force Orchestra with a significant slogan "Music unites". It would be possible to pass by this seemingly peaceful programme, if not the sum of military assistance for the 'independent' voiced by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, at about the same time.

Yesterday, Putin and Steinmeier discussed the situation in Ukraine, including the question of the United Nations Mission in Donbass. In connection with the Minsk agreements, the President of the Russian Federation referred to the “Steinmeier Formula” with the hope that it would be implemented.

For the fourth consecutive year, the President of Ukraine has been promising to ruthlessly fight corruption with the help of an anti-corruption court. Under pressure of the West, Poroshenko promised to create a long-awaited judicial instance in the shortest possible time, literally before the end of the year.