The violence in Ukraine has now spread to Kyiv.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry (MVD) has released a statement on a shooting near Kiev this morning. According the the MVD, local police received reports of a shooting in the village of Mykhailivska Rubezhivka at 7:40 (4:40 GMT). Unknown gunmen had opened fire on a minibus.
More Russian aggression continued as Russian special forces, foreign irregulars, and pro-Russian protestors seized a police station in Kostiantynivka. And the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, was shot by unknown gunmen and is fighting for his life.
And another body was found near Slavyansk:
The body was found at the site of the discovery of the bodies of the opposition deputy from Horlivka, Volodymyr Rybak, and the Kiev Polytechnic Institute student, Yuri Popravko, with similar signs of a violent death.
The identity of the deceased is not known.
In response, the President announced a new round of sanctions.
President Obama, declaring that Russia was continuing to bully and threaten Ukraine, said here on Monday that the United States would impose additional sanctions on Russian individuals and entities, as well as freezing some exports of military technology.
Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, freed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December and now in exile, visited the pro-Russian compound in Donetsk to dialogue with the protestors there.
“Donetsk,” he concluded, “is far from being as pro-Russian as it could be.” In the same vein, he said after hosting a two-day meeting of Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals before traveling to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and now here, Russians must reject Mr. Putin’s propaganda that “fascists” have taken power in Ukraine, while Ukrainians must concede the blunders that fed that myth.
For Mr. Khodorkovsky, even the separatists who declared the Donetsk People’s Republic from the 11th floor of the regional administrative building they occupied this month, proved at least capable of dialogue. Their limited room for maneuver or discussion, he said, “bore the stamp of Mr. Putin’s bureaucracy.”
At a meeting with civic society groups in a former factory converted into an arts center, Mr. Khodorkovsky noted that breaking with the kind of dependency nurtured by the Soviet authorities was a critical step in achieving the freedom and prosperity that both sides say they seek.
OSCE chairman Didier Burkhalter had this to say about the hostage crisis and the conflict in general:
This incident goes against the spirit of the recent Geneva Statement agreed upon by Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United States and the European Union aiming at de-escalating the situation and leading the way out of the challenging situation, Burkhalter said. At the same time, it underlines the importance of the international community’s efforts to assist all sides in Ukraine to keep channels of communication open and find ways to peacefully resolve the crisis.