Korban transferred to house arrest:
A Ukrainian court has ordered house arrest for UKROP party leader Hennadiy Korban until December 31.
Kyiv's Pechera district court issued the ruling on November 6.
Korban's lawyer, Oksana Tomchuk, said the court's decision would be "most likely" appealed.
Korban, 45, was initially detained on October 31 on suspicion of involvement in organized crime, embezzlement, and kidnapping, and released 72 hours later as prosecutors failed to issue an arrest warrant against him.
Korban was detained again on November 3 after investigators obtained some more "evidence" of his alleged "involvement into a number of crimes."
UKROP activists say Korban, a former deputy governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, is being harassed for political reasons.
Korban's party, the Ukrainian Union of Patriots (UKROP), was officially registered in September 2014. (UNIAN, Interfax)
Washington offers Kyiv another $1 billion linked to reforms:
The White House has offered to provide a third $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine that would be contingent on the country's continued progress toward eliminating corruption and reforming taxes.
Vice President Joe Biden, in a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on November 5, said the United States was ready to help Ukraine, but Kyiv must first enact economic reforms
The U.S. financing and a $1.7 billion loan disbursement from the International Monetary Fund have been held up by squabbling between the Ukrainian parliament and Finance Ministry over proposed tax cuts.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on November 4 that the near-deadlock over the level of planned tax cuts threatened to derail the government's 2016 budget and Western financing that is linked to it.
Lawmakers want steep cuts that the Finance Ministry says are not sustainable.
"We now have many allies in the West and these allies will stand with us so long as we show political will, responsibility and the unchanging nature of our goals and values as we carry out reform," he said. "We must all speak in one language." (w/ Reuters)
Yatsenyuk, Baltic leaders blast Russian-German pipeline plan:
Ukrainian and the Baltic leaders have blasted a planned second Nordic Stream pipeline to funnel natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The project would cost Ukraine $2 billion a year in lost revenues as it takes away business from the land-based pipeline that transits Ukraine and Poland, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at a press conference with Baltic leaders in Riga on November 5.
Poland and Slovakia would also lose $300 million and $800 million, respectively, in annual pipeline revenues, while it would deprive the European Union of real energy independence, he said.
"We do believe that this project has nothing based on economic issues -- it is more a political one," he said.
Yatsenyuk, whose government has been fighting Russian-backed separatists since last year in eastern Ukraine, called on the EU to "seriously" examine the issue.
He warned against allowing Moscow to "facilitate a bottleneck and to control the energy market of the EU, too."
Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma said she was "highly concerned" about the project and called for a thorough EU review of the proposed seabed pipeline.
Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas questioned whether the plan was in compliance with EU rules.
"It is quite clear that it would have a very significant negative impact on the gas supply of Ukraine," Roivas said.
Gazprom agreed in June with Western European partners Anglo-Dutch Shell, Germany's E.ON, and Austria's OMV to build the Nord Stream-2 pipeline to Germany to bypass conflict-torn Ukraine but also neighboring Poland.
The route under the Baltic Sea from Russia would have a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year and would double the flow of the existing Nord Stream pipeline currently linking the two countries.
No time frame was given for the deal.
For both Germany and Russia, the new pipeline would eliminate the uncertainty about winter gas supplies caused by a constant tug of war between Ukraine and Russia over gas issues, while it would boost Germany as a distribution hub for Russian gas in Western Europe. (AFP, dpa)
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, November 5. Check back here tomorrow morning for more of our continuing coverage.
Ukraine rebels complete small arms withdrawal
Donetsk, Ukraine, Nov 5, 2015 (AFP) -- Ukraine's pro-Russian insurgents said Thursday they had withdrawn all of their smaller weapons from a deadly buffer zone in the ex-Soviet state's separatist east.
The reported pullback was in line with a trust-building September 1 pact that has sharply de-escalated the violence and seen just seven Ukrainian soldiers die from enemy fire -- about the same number killed daily at some points last year.
"Today, we have completed the arms withdrawal," Donetsk ground commander Eduard Basurin told AFP by telephone.
He said the last nine mortars had been pulled back from Ilovaisk, a frontline town where Ukraine lost more that 100 servicemen in a rebel onslaught in August.
But it remains unclear whether this seeming return to a semblance of peace in one of Europe's deadliest crises since the Balkans wars of the 1990s will last.
A similar deal regarding larger weapons, struck during international negotiations in February, was never implemented in full.
And AFP teams have heard hours-long battles being waged after dark around the separatists' de facto capital Donetsk for much of the past week.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) say they have been barred by rebels from accessing the area and have seen arms that had moved away from the front later return to their original posts.
"It is important to note that we have observed many discrepancies in the withdrawal process and I urge the sides to use the last few remain days now to fully comply with the (deal)," Alexander Hug of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) said.
"Since Sunday, the SMM has noted a significant increase in violence in and around Donetsk airport. On Sunday alone, we recorded 114 explosions in this specific area," Hug told reporters in Kiev.
Ukraine announced the end of a similar pullback from the smaller pro-Russian Lugansk region on Tuesday.
But Basurin said Kiev was not expected to move all its tanks and mortars from the Donetsk front until the weekend.
- Scrambling for a way out -
The proposed buffer zone is meant to stretch 30 kilometres (19 miles) wide and be overseen by OSCE monitors from both Russia and the West.
But Kiev accuses the various rebel units -- estimated at 40,000 heavily-equipped fighters who are backed by Russian-supplied mid-range rockets and tanks -- of effectively ignoring the truce.
Russia denies instigating and backing the revolt in reprisal for last year's ouster of a Moscow-backed president in Ukraine and the subsequent leadership's decision to tie its future to the European Union and the NATO military bloc.
The September 1 deal was unexpectedly signed after a series of broken ceasefires left world leaders scrambling for a way out of a conflict that has killed more than 8,000 people and even further eroded the West's relations with the Kremlin.
It was negotiated without the presence of either Russia or Germany and France -- the main European sponsors of previous peace talks and close allies of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.