Russia has blocked the transit of Ukrainian confectionery products to Georgia and Azerbaijan, the president of the association Ukrkondprom, Alexander Baldynyuk, said on Saturday, April 9th, Deutsche Welle reported.

"Almost fifty wagons of Ukrainian products destined for Azerbaijan stood for more than a month at the customs station Derbent in Dagestan, and only at the beginning of April were they turned around back to Ukraine. A few days ago Russian customs stopped all shipments at the customs …

During the last 24 hours, the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh was violated 125 times. The use of heavy machine guns was reported. The Trend publication disclosed this, quoting the statement of the press service of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan.

Baku clarified that the Armed Forces of the Republic answered the enemy with 125 response fire strikes.

At the same time, the press service of the Ministry of Defense of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) reported that the ceasefire …

Ukrainian Intelligence stated that Russia continues to allocate funds from the state budget to support separatists in the occupied part of Ukraine.

"It has been established that in the beginning of April, occupied territories received about 800 million rubles from the Russian budget. Of these, 775 million was allocated for the administrative apparatus and the security forces of the so-called DPR and LPR, where local residents are under the control of the Russian occupying power," the press …

The United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert Work, stated in an interview with Reuters on April 8th, that the Pentagon needs to buy 18 more Russian RD-180 rocket engines in order to launch military satellites into orbit. According to him, this need will continue to be in place until a similar American engine is developed. “We see no means by which to develop these engine types within the next six years. We need Russian RD-180 rocket engines during the transition period,” Work explained. …

The Ukrainian representative of Joint Center on Control and Coordination for issues related to the ceasefire and the stabilization of the contact line, stated that Russian-backed separatists are trying to intimidate OSCE SMM observers.

“The shelling of OSCE representatives is nothing more than another attempt by the militants to intimidate the OSCE SMM observers and force them to abandon the practice of mirror patrolling proposed by the Ukrainian representatives in the JCCC,” the press-officer …

In an interview with Ukrainian media, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced a number of steps for “deoffshorization.”

“Attempts to prohibit the creation of and transfer of assets to offshore companies only led to an increase in their numbers. It is absolutely a dead end. I would like to present new steps which we should take to implement an effective, rapid and deep ‘deoffshorization’ process,” he said.

President Poroshenko announced that he assigned the Ministry of Finance, State …

Gernot Erler, the Special Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany for Russian policy, noted that the threats to the members of the special OSCE monitoring mission are "unacceptable." Erler reiterated his call for the fulfilment of the Minsk agreements.Reports of observers of the special monitoring mission (SMM) of the OSCE about the increased ceasefire violations in the east of Ukraine, as well as the presence of heavy weapons there "excite concern,” Erler said. "I urge all parties to …

In April, the European Commission intends to propose the introduction of a visa-free policy for Ukrainian citizens, contrary to the results of the referendum in the Netherlands, Reuters reports, citing a source in the leadership of the European Union.

"It may seem that we are ignoring the Dutch voters. However, we should keep our word with Ukraine as they have fulfilled all the conditions," the source said.

For the policy to come into effect, it must be approved by a majority of the member …