HELSINKI (AP) — Over 30 European foreign ministers have gathered in the Finnish capital to mark the 70th anniversary of the continent's key human rights body, the Council of Europe.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — With President Petro Poroshenko slipping in the polls a week ahead of elections, Ukraine's government is trying to put a brave face on his achievements, insisting it is well...

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is studying ways to help bolster the economy in strife-torn eastern Ukraine, the EU's top diplomat said Monday, amid tensions with Russia over a naval confrontation in the Black Sea last month.

Ukraine has been seeking help from its international partners at the EU and NATO since Russian border guards fired on three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Black Sea on Nov. 25. The crews were captured and the ships seized.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The Latest on the tensions between Russia and Ukraine(all times local):

11:15 a.m.

NATO foreign ministers are meeting with Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin as the country seeks international backing for its Black Sea standoff with Russia.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the 28 other NATO foreign ministers will offer political support to Ukraine, but will not provide naval escorts or any military assistance beyond what's being done now.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland has honored a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned in Russia on charges of plotting acts of terrorism for his defense of Ukrainians held captive in Russia.

Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said Tuesday he has bestowed the eighth annual Pro Dignitate Humana (For Human Dignity) award on Oleg Sentsov, an opponent of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

BERLIN (AP) — The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany met in Berlin on Monday for talks on bringing an end to the fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The focus of the meeting was implementing an unfulfilled peace accord reached in the Belarus capital of Minsk in 2015 and the possibility of bringing United Nations peacekeepers to the region where an armed conflict has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's government is rejecting the idea that former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder should face sanctions over his links to Russian business and to President Vladimir Putin.

Schroeder was close to Putin as chancellor and became involved with a Russian-German gas pipeline project shortly after leaving office in 2005. Last year he was named chairman of Russian state oil giant Rosneft, drawing criticism from Chancellor Angela Merkel.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary will continue to withhold its support for Ukraine's further integration with the European Union as long as a new Ukrainian education law remains unchanged, Hungary's foreign minister said Thursday.

The education law passed last month specifies that Ukrainian will be the main language used in schools, rolling back the option for lessons to be taught in other languages. Ukraine has some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians, mostly in the country's west.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine's foreign minister told U.S. senators on Tuesday that sanctions against Russia shouldn't be eased and possibly should be ratcheted up as Moscow escalates its military aggression against its western neighbor.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Unidentified vandals have spray-painted Nazi graffiti at a memorial cemetery in Ukraine where some Poles are buried.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin denounced the vandals' action Wednesday at the Bykivnia memorial on the outskirts of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

Bykivnia is a burial place for victims of the Soviet secret police, including some Poles, who were executed in the 1920s-1940s.

MOSCOW (AP) — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday Russia could break diplomatic ties with Ukraine over reported security incidents in Crimea, something it didn't even do after annexing Crimea or throwing its support behind separatist rebels in the east.

State news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying that he wouldn't like the ties to be severed but "if there is no other way to change the situation, the president could take this step."