And here is more on that confab between Poroshenko and Biden:
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke by telephone on March 14 with both calling on Russia and Russian-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine to implement the Minsk cease-fire agreements.
In a statement, the White House said both leaders also welcomed the disbursement of the first tranche of a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout loan program for Ukraine.
The $5 billion tranche, received by Kyiv on March 13, is the first part of a four-year, $17.5 billion IMF package.
The IMF loan is designed to unlock other credits for Ukraine from other lenders, eventually allowing Kyiv to receive a total financial package worth some $40 billion.
Ukraine's Finance Ministry says $2.2 billion of the initial loan tranche has been placed in government accounts while the rest has gone to Ukraine's central bank to help stabilize the troubled national currency, the hryvnya.
(Reuters, AP, AFP)
Another update from our news desk:
Adam Osmayev, a Chechen commander of a Ukrainian volunteer battalion has denied any involvement in the murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov.
Pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda had reported that "the organizers of the crime could have been Chechen militants" that it said have fought alongside government forces against Russian-backed separatists in the war in eastern Ukraine.
It cited an unnamed law enforcement source as claiming the masterminds of the murder were Osmayev and his wife, Amina Okuyeva.
Nemtsov was shot dead on February 27 on a Moscow bridge just meters away from the Kremlin.
Osmayev told Russia's Dozhd TV station on March 14 that the accusation was "complete nonsense, which isn't even worth commenting on." Osmayev said he viewed Nemtsov positively and news about his murder was "painful" to learn.
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.
He then joined a Ukrainian volunteer battalion named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen rebel leader who fought against Russia in the early 1990s.
(UNIAN, tvrain.ru)
RFE/RL's Ivan Putilov has been writing about the evident harrassment of independent journalists in Crimea.
KYIV -- One year after Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the pro-Russian de facto authorities continue to crack down on independent journalists there.
This week, agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Crimean capital of Simferopol raided the homes of two reporters from the Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent journalism group that was forced to relocate to Kyiv after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.
In a statement issued on March 13, the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nongovernmental organization based in New York, described the raids as "repressive actions" and said journalists covering Crimea "have been harassed, attacked, detained, and had their equipment seized" over the last year.
Journalist Natalya Kokorina said the FSB searched the home of her parents, where Kokorina was registered, on March 13. At 8 a.m., Kokorina received a phone call telling her to come to the apartment immediately.
"In the morning, a man called saying he was from the...police," Kokorina told RFE/RL. "He said the doors of the apartment where I am registered and where my parents live had been sealed. My parents' telephones had been turned off."
She was subsequently detained and questioned for more than six hours before being released.
"Natasha is the author of many investigations about problems in Crimean society, corruption, thieves in power and the Russian occupation," wrote the founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Dmytro Gnap, on his Facebook page. "She and her colleagues have had to practically work underground on their articles."
Read the entire article here