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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko speaks at the ceremony commemorating the fallen Heroes of the "Heavenly Hundred" in Kiev, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. The "Heavenly Hundred" is what Ukrainians in Kiev call those who died during months of anti-government protests in 2013 and 2014. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

MOSCOW (AP) Ukraine's president on Thursday pledged to resume coal supplies from separatist-controlled parts of the country after it was blocked by volunteer battalions, threatening to disrupt the country's power supply.

Fighting in Ukraine's industrial east between government troops and Russia-backed rebels has killed more than 9,800 people since April 2014. Despite the hostilities, Kiev continued to buy coal from areas controlled by separatists as power stations in Ukraine are mostly designed to run on the specific type of coal that is produced there.

Sales were suspended when Ukraine's unruly volunteer battalions and some lawmakers blocked a railroad that brings coal across the front line late last month.

President Petro Poroshenko said that the lack of coal from the east risks leaving entire towns without heating and he pledged to resume the supply.

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said that about nine out of 24 million tons of coal that Ukrainian power stations require every year is imported from the rebel-occupied east. He has held an emergency government session which agreed on a temporary shutdown of some parts of the electricity grid if the supply shortage gets worse.

An Associated Press investigation in 2015 detailed how billionaire Renat Akhmetov, one of Ukraine's richest men, operates factories and coal mines on both sides of the front line, powering the country's economy and pouring hundreds of millions in taxes into government coffers. His steel products, which are finished in rebel territory, are then shipped to the West where they bring in billions in revenue for Akhmetov that then indirectly props up the separatist government. His companies provide more than 300,000 jobs across Ukraine, most in the rebel-held east.

Poroshenko on Thursday mentioned the same figure when he said this is approximately how many people could lose their jobs if the economic ties between parts of the east and the rest of Ukraine are severed completely. Poroshenko painted a grim picture of what might happen if the factories and coal mines in rebel-occupied Donbass grind to a halt.

"What is better for us: for them to work in the mines, or for them to shoot at us?" Poroshenko asked in a public speech in Kiev. "We are implementing a strategy to restore the country's territorial integrity returning Donbass to Ukraine's fold and getting Ukraine back to Donbass."

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Ukraine's president vows to resume coal supply from east - Colorado Springs Gazette

KIEV Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russian hackers of targeting its power grid, financial system and other infrastructure with a new type of virus that attacks industrial processes, the latest in a series of cyber offensives against the country.

Oleksandr Tkachuk, Ukraine's security service chief of staff, said at a press conference that the attacks were orchestrated by the Russian security service with help from private software firms and criminal hackers, and looked like they were designed by the same people who created malware known as "BlackEnergy."

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) could not be reached for comment. Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev that it has been waging a "cyber war" on Ukraine since relations between the two countries collapsed following Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of Russian-backed separatist fighting in Ukraine's Donbass region.

The allegations are the latest sign that Russia's behavior in conflict areas has not changed markedly since Donald Trump became U.S. president last month, calling for warmer relations between Washington and Moscow.

The new attacks caused some of Ukraines cyber defenders to cancel plans to attend this weeks RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco, according to one Western expert familiar with the situation.

If the allegations are confirmed, that could help Ukraine further its case for the United States to help coordinate a multi-national effort to counter the threat of Russian cyber warfare.

"There is a global cyber war of Russia against (the) whole world," President Petro Poroshenko told Reuters in an interview in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Ukraine said Russia made 6,500 cyber attacks on it in November and December alone. Ukraine blamed hackers for knocking out part of Kiev's power grid in December, and for attacks on the defense and finance ministries and the State Treasury.

Tkachuk said at Wednesday's press conference that malicious software used in the campaign was designed to attack specific industrial processes. As an example, he said that the code included modules that sought to harm equipment inside the electric grid.

"Russian hackers and infobots become an important tool of the aggression against our country," Tkachuk said.

He said the attacks employed a mechanism dubbed "Telebots" to infect computers that control infrastructure.

Slovakian cyber-security firm ESET used the same name in December to identify the hacking group responsible for attacks on Ukraine's financial sector and energy industries.

ESET said it believed that Telebots had evolved from BlackEnergy, a hacking group that attacked Ukraine's energy industry starting in December 2015.

ESET researcher Cameron Camp said that the latest attack software sounded like a modest adaptation of an program his firm had published a report on in December.

Both campaigns were carefully targeted, opened back doors, sent out certain types of files to unknown masters, and downloaded tools that can wipe out those files.

Without directly attributing the attack to the Russians, Camp said "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's duck-like."

Separately on Wednesday, cyber security firm CyberX said that it had uncovered a separate espionage operation in Ukraine that had compromised more than 60 victims.

Victims of the malware included an energy ministry, a scientific research institute and a firm that designs remote monitoring systems for oil & gas pipelines, according to CyberX.

CyberX Chief Technology Officer Nir Giller said he was not sure who was behind the operation, but suspected it was conducting reconnaissance for launching further attacks.

(Writing by Matthias Williams and Jim Finkle; Additional reporting by Joseph Menn and Dustin Volz in San Francisco; Editing by Dominic Evans and Grant McCool)

KUALA LUMPUR Malaysian police made a third arrest on Thursday in their hunt for the people involved in the murder of the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

JERUSALEM Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right political allies hailed on Thursday a shift in U.S. support for a Palestinian state and shrugged off a call by President Donald Trump to curb Israeli settlements on occupied land.

BONN, Germany Russia does not interfere in other countries' interior affairs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday at the start of his first meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

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Ukraine charges Russia with new cyber attacks on infrastructure - Reuters

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Ukraine: Warring Parties Agree To Pull Back Heavy Weapons, Mediator Says STRATFOR Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have agreed to withdraw heavy weapons from the front lines by Feb. 20 in line with the so-called Minsk peace plan, Martin Sajdik, the lead negotiator on the Ukraine crisis for the ... Mediator Says Warring Sides In Ukraine Agree To Pull Back Heavy WeaponsRadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty all 18 news articles »

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Ukraine: Warring Parties Agree To Pull Back Heavy Weapons, Mediator Says - STRATFOR

Here are five key facts about the 33-month conflict in Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking industrial east that has defied repeated international efforts to bring peace:

The war erupted in April 2014 as the ex-Soviet republic was thrust into a geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia and the West.

It followed the ouster of Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 after massive street protests over the government's decision to turn its back on closer ties with the European Union.

Moscow responded by annexing Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March before armed men without any insignia on their uniforms began taking over government buildings across southeastern Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin later admitted on television that he plotted the Crimean invasion to "save" the Russian-speaking region.

Kiev and the West say Russia also instigated the eastern uprising and poured arms and troops across the border to bolster the two self-proclaimed rebel republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

But the Kremlin portrays the war as an internal conflict between an ethnic-Russian minority angered by a "coup" in Kiev and a nationalist government.

Putin once said that any Russian citizen captured or killed in the war was a volunteer "following the call of their heart".

The war began with Ukraine's army in shambles after decades of neglect.

Kiev announced an "anti-terrorist" operation in April 2014 to push the Russian-backed separatist fighters out of towns in the industrial regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.

But government troops suffered embarrassing early setbacks.

Pictures emerged of woefully ill-prepared soldiers simply giving up their weapons and tanks to the rebels when faced by angry crowds of locals.

Kiev often had to rely on a patchwork of volunteer battalions -- which included prominent far-right nationalists -- before co-opting them into a new National Guard run by the interior ministry.

Government forces eventually made gains but the conflict settled into a stalemate. Ukraine estimated it was facing 40,000 insurgents and 10,000 regular Russian forces at its peak.

Kiev has taken some strides towards bolstering its fighting capacity -- although shortages of equipment remain common among troops who are spearheading the fight.

Heavy military spending and the loss of vital industries have seen Ukraine's economy shrink by about 17 percent between 2014 and 2015.

Annual inflation rocketed to nearly 50 percent last year while the local currency has plunged against the dollar.

Kiev has since negotiated a big debt writeoff deal with private creditors and secured a $17.5-billion (16.4-billion-euro) rescue loan from the IMF and other aid from foreign allies.

But Ukraine has received just a fraction of the IMF cash because endemic corruption remains a hangover of its Soviet past.

Analysts believe the problem has been especially severe in the army.

They say senior commanders embezzle money assigned for new equipment and that lower-level officials accept payments from parents who don't want their children to go the battlefield.

The United States and the European Union reacted to the annexation of Crimea by imposing economic sanctions on Russia and Putin's inner circle.

NATO has also created a spearhead force to ward off any potential Russian advance into the Baltic states and eastern Europe.

Poroshenko wants the sanctions extended for as long as the war lasts -- a possibility that may be in question with new US President Donald Trump seeking to rebuild ties with Russia.

Major Western powers have also flown equipment and training squads into Ukraine to boost the country's fighting capabilities and morale.

But Kiev has been frustrated by the West's refusal to send in weapons that could really counter Russia and swing the war in Ukraine's favour.

Perhaps the insurgents' biggest weakness is that they are not a single force and have different agendas.

A string of assassinations of rebel warlords in the east remain unresolved.

Some Kiev analysts believe the killings resulted from a desire of one particular warlord to usurp another while the rebels themselves place the blame squarely on Kiev.

Each of the two republics are seeking full autonomy from the central government and have their own self-proclaimed presidents.

- AFP

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The Ukraine conflict: Five things to know - Times LIVE

New York Times

As Fighting Escalates in Ukraine, Attention Focuses on Donald Trump New York Times This week, in a letter to Lithuania's president, Mr. Trump seemed to echo that sentiment and personally expressed support for keeping Ukraine intact. The lack of a clear position on the conflict has bewildered officials on both sides, particularly in ... In its fight against Putin, Ukraine feels abandoned by the WestCNN Putin to Trump: Lift Sanctions Or Ukraine Gets ItNewsweek Neocons Use Ukraine to Reverse Trump Plan to Thaw Relations with Putin and Wage Global WarCenter for Research on Globalization Toledo Blade -Deutsche Welle -The Economist all 135 news articles »

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As Fighting Escalates in Ukraine, Attention Focuses on Donald Trump - New York Times