KYIV – Ukraine’s Parliament passed a controversial bill that pro-presidential lawmakers say aligns legislation closer to reality on the ground in war-torn Donbas.

Exactly 280 deputies – 56 more than needed – voted on January 18 for President Petro Poroshenko’s measures to name Russia as an aggressor state and designate areas Kyiv doesn’t control as “temporarily occupied territories” in a law that could potentially limit the human rights of residents in the two easternmost oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk.