The authorities in Kiev lay blame for the heaviest fighting in nearly a year on the withdrawal of Russian officers who had acted as mediators.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/world/europe/ukraine-war-russia.html
https://www.ft.com/content/ff155500-e5a3-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec
http://www.finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/kitay-zabrakoval-ceny-na-rossiyskiy-gaz-1011685032
https://rg.ru/2017/12/19/aleksandr-bortnikov-fsb-rossii-svobodna-ot-politicheskogo-vliianiia.html
https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2017/12/20/745989-pensiyu-zamorozili
https://www.rbc.ru/newspaper/2017/12/20/5a37efa09a79477dc3323897
In the final months of 2017, the most significant advance in Russia’s relationship with Latin America was arguably the inclusion of eight Latin American teams in the 32-team field for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Russia was almost absent from media coverage of the BRICS+ summit in Xiamen in September 2017 and Vladimir Putin’s address to the APEC summit in Da Nang, Vietnam in November did not even mention Latin America. In contrast to high-profile Russian political and military initiatives in Latin America in 2008 and 2013–2014, its engagement with the region in 2017 has been uneven.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russian-engagement-latin-america-update
https://www.gazeta.ru/business/2017/12/19/11500118.shtml