Daily Digest: Top news of Friday, Aug. 10 - Aug. 10, 2018

Poltava’s Kyivsky Court on Aug. 10 closed a kidnapping case against Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes. Kernes and two of his security guards were accused of kidnapping two EuroMaidan Revolution activists, torturing them and threatening to kill them in January 2014
Ukraine is preparing to take into service a new weapon: the Bohdana, a 155-millimeter heavy self-propelled howitzer. The newly-built weapon in now undergoing a series of live-fire tests.
A new international train route is to take travelers through Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Official studies show that legions of battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers and officers are about to quit the army forever, citing dissatisfaction with their thankless service.
The Kremlin considers the Azov and Black seas in Ukraine’s south as the important staging ground for its continuous expansion in Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council secretary said on Aug. 10 during his visit to Ukraine’s army positions near Mariupol, an industrial seaport city of nearly 500,000 people on the coast of the Azov Sea, 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
After the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution sent his former boss fleeing to Russia, American political consultant Paul Manafort — who raked in $65 million from ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions — was bothered by one question: Why didn’t he have enough money?
As Ukraine prepares to mark in late August the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Ilovaisk, the bloodiest episode of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has issued the first-ever estimate of the civilian death toll from the fighting in the battle.
Two law firms in Ukraine – Asters and Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners – will merge on Oct.1, Asters announced in a press release.
The Canada-based Dnipro Choir, which performs Ukrainian songs, is going on a trip that might become a life-changing adventure for the singers. The choir is coming to Ukraine, where it will perform at the International Ukrainian Dance & Culture Festival in Lviv through Aug. 10–13.