TODAY: Kremlin cancels live feed of Putin’s ‘peace-minded’ Crimea speech; disputed convoys heading for eastern Ukraine as violence intensifies in Donetsk; Rosneft seeks loan, struggles with sanctions; Ukraine restricts Russian airlines; import ban to be made official in October.

The Kremlin unexpectedly canceled the live feed of President Vladimir Putin’s much-hyped speech in Crimea yesterday; and the video of the speech released afterwards contained no audio.  The speech saw Putin adopting a softer tone than usual, vowing to halt violence in eastern Ukraine and generally demonstrating ‘a more peace-minded stance’.  The Moscow Times says the speech had a ‘reconciliatory’ tone, and that it argued against excessive confrontation with the West.  Russia’s disputed humanitarian convoy is now ‘heading straight for rebel held areas’ in Ukraine, after apparently pausing last night to let a number of military vehicles across the border into Ukraine. Donetsk ‘is starting to resemble a war zone’; gas and electricity infrastructures have been devastated, and the U.N. says the region’s death toll has nearly doubled in the past two weeks to over 2,000.  The hacking of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s Twitter account is under investigation, after a series of satirical tweets were posted, including one announcing his resignation due to embarrassment.