Latest on the gas talks:
The European Union says it hopes for a “positive outcome” at talks in Brussels on March 2 between the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers over a gas dispute that is threatening deliveries to western Europe.
Aleksei Miller, head of Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom, was not attending.
Gazprom threatened last week to cut deliveries to Ukraine over what it says is a lack of payments.
It also has begun shipping supplies directly to Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Russia says Kyiv must pay for shipments to separatists.
But Ukraine’s state-run Naftogaz says it won’t pay for shipments it does not receive.
Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak says a $15 million payment made last week by Naftogaz will only cover Gazprom’s deliveries to Ukraine for another week.
The EU receives a third of its natural gas from Russia, with about half of that shipped through pipelines in Ukraine.
Barring any major developments, that ends the live blogging for today.
The OSCE has been urged to take a larger role in the Ukraine conflict:
The leaders of Russia, Germany and France have agreed to ask the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to help with the implementation of the latest cease-fire agreement in eastern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande spoke by phone on March 2.
According to a German government spokesman, they agreed that the OSCE should play a greater role as observers of the second Minsk cease-fire agreement and the removal of heavy weapons.
They sent a request to the OSCE to publish a daily report on the current developments.
Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Moscow and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine must implement the cease-fire or face "consequences" that could further hit Russia's faltering economy. (AFP and Reuters)
Moscow is focusing its Nemtsov investigation on Ukraine links:
A pro-Kremlin newspaper reported on March 3 that investigators are "focusing on" on the possibility that Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov's killing was connected to the conflict in Ukraine.
Without citing specific sources, the daily Izvestia said investigators "are not ruling out that Nemtsov was killed on the orders of the Ukrainian special services."
It reported that that "the organizers of the crime could have been Chechen militants" it said have fought alongside government forces against Russian-backed separatists in the war in eastern Ukraine.
It quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as claiming the organizers were ethnic Chechen Adam Osmayev and his wife, Amina Okuyeva.
Osmayev was arrested in Ukraine in 2012, at Moscow's behest, on suspicion of plotting to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin, but was released in November 2014.
Federal investigators have said a link to the Ukraine conflict is one of several lines of investigation they are pursuing, but they have not commented on the Izvestia report.
The report in Izvestia -- which has become a platform for anti-Western views -- was part of a growing number of Russian statements and Kremlin-allied media reports suggesting the West or Ukraine could have had Nemtsov killed.