Ukrainian studies

AGERPRES special correspondent Catalin Alexandru reports: President Klaus Iohannis on Tuesday started his official visit to Kiev with a visit to the Holodomor Museum and a solemn moment spent at the triptych placed on the spot where the first people fell victims of the Revolution that led to the removal of the Yanukovych regime.

Photo credit: (c) Alex MICSIK / AGERPRES PHOTO

Ruslana, the Ukrainian singer who won the 2004 Eurovision contest, attends Romania's national selection for this competition on Sunday, in Craiova (west of Bucharest); she declared she wishes Romania to win this year, as she was a fan of Romanian culture.

Photo credit: (c) Bogdan BARBULESCU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

Ruslana will perform a 30-minute show after the contest.

The EU  has invited the energy ministers of Russia and Ukraine to a meeting over gas supply problems on Monday.

The European Commission Vice President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic had sent letters to the energy ministers of the two countries inviting them to a trilateral meeting in Brussels over gas supplies, a spokesperson said on Thursday.

Ukrainian authorities have detained a number of suspects in connection with a bomb attack in Kharkiv that left at least two people dead and 10 injured.

The explosion occurred at 13:20 local time as people were gathering near the city's Palace of Sport for a rally marking one year since the start of the Maidan protests in Kiev, according to reports of the BBC News.

An explosion killed two people and wounded 11 on Feb. 22 in Ukraine's government-controlled eastern city of Kharkiv, officials said.
      
The explosion happened during a pro-Ukrainian march marking the one-year anniversary of the overthrow of the country's former pro-Kremlin president.
      

Former President Viktor Yanukovich promised to return back home and expressed his regret for the current situation in Ukraine in an interview for the Russian Channel 1.

"No regime is worth the losses Ukraine has suffered after the events of February 21-22, 2014," he said. "The country is destroyed, we see territorial losses, casualties, the destruction of whole regions."

The Ukranian nationalist Right sector movement has rejected the agreements reached at the Minsk summit on Thursday.

Movement's leader Dmytro Yarosh announced Friday that the organization will make every attempt to stop the implementation of the peace action plan on his social media profile, TASS information agency reported.

A torch-lit march held in Kyiv to honor a controversial anti-Soviet resistance leader shows Ukraine is following in the footsteps of the Nazis, a senior Russian foreign ministry official said Jan. 2.
       

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed today a decree which declares the first day of last year's pro-EU protests an official holiday.

TASS reports that November 21 will be celebrated as Day of Dignity and Freedom, according to the President's press service.

Russia and Ukraine made a progress in reaching an agreement on the gas supplies row, reports Reuters.

European leaders, however, said Moscow has to significantly increase its efforts to support the ceasefire agreement in eastern Ukraine.

The deal aims at re-opening Russian gas supplies to Ukraine ahead of the cold winter months.