Borodai is an interesting character. A Russian citizen, believed to be part of the FSB, who came down to Crimea following Maidan to "advise" annexation efforts, and then skipped on over to Donetsk just as the secessionist movement ratcheted up there. He was promptly "elected" "prime minister" of Donetsk.

If Moscow does in fact have a point man in Eastern Ukraine, Borodai's most likely the guy.

I'm not all that surprised, they have no independent future without Putin's acquiescence. The question is going to be whether they can agree on anything. There will be various parties trying to see that they don't, too.

Chopper shot down, a border post attacked, troops shelled, checkpoints attacked.

And the same PR from the Russian press. Even as they say, "LGR representatives say that they've attacked a check point" the Russian press has another article saying that "The Ukrainian army shot at opolchentsy and violated the ceasefire." Bolotov, Gubarev, Borodai all continue the same refrain--"they shot at us." Conspicuously absent is the word "first," as in, "They shot at us first."

That Poroshenko has said from the very beginning that they'd clearly return fire is something I don't recall reading in any Russian source (Russian-language sources in Ukraine abound, and they reported Poroshenko's plan bilingually ... Sometimes irritatingly not-quite-bilingual, since some translators mix the two languages a bit).

Poroshenko also said he'd want them to establish a 10 km buffer zone at the border. As of late last night control hadn't been established at Izvaryne and the most that the army's done there is to establish a kind of buffer between the LPR-controlled border crossing and deeper inside Ukr territory.

And yes, the news environment is very noisy and unreliable. I see the same story spun 5 different ways every day.