Some news just in from Brussels (courtesy of RFE/RL's news desk):
The European Commission says both Georgia and Ukraine meets all benchmarks for getting visa-free travel to the European Union's Schengen zone, possibly allowing the citizens of the two countries to travel to the EU without visas as soon as 2016.
The commission announced on December 18 that it will now be up to the EU member states and the European Parliament to decide whether to actually grant visa-free travel for the two countries next year.
However sources in Brussels say that, while the European Parliament will vote in favor of visa-free travel for the two countries, it might prove difficult among some member states to approve the measure, especially regarding Ukraine.
Some big member states, notably Germany, are believed to be fearful that visa liberalization will increase migratory flows into the EU.
The commission's reports regarding Ukraine and Georgia meeting the benchmarks were initially supposed to come out on 15 December.
However, Brussels chose to wait until a meeting held on December 16 in Brussels between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, EU Council President Donald Tusk, and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to iron out the last remaining differences.
The Kremlin-funded outlet RT is claiming that Vladimir Putin actually didn't admit Russia has a military presence in eastern Ukraine.
In case you missed it, at his annual press conference yesterday, Putin told journalists that Russia has "never said" there were no Russian personnel carrying out "certain tasks" in eastern Ukraine, but that this does not mean there are "regular" Russian army troops there. "Feel the difference," he added.
This was widely interpreted as an admission that Russian military specialists were present in eastern Ukraine.
Here's another Ukraine-related development from our news desk:
European Council President Donald Tusk says the proposed Nord Stream-2 pipeline extension does not meet EU energy rules on supply diversification and would undermine Ukraine's role as a gas transit state.
Speaking during a press conference at the close of a two-day summit of EU leaders in Brussels on December 18, he said the planned second Russian natural-gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany flouted EU rules on diversifying energy supplies, energy sources, and energy transit routes.
As European Council president, Tusk does not have the final say on whether the EU approves the pipeline. That power rests with the European Commission.
The planned new pipeline is supported by Germany because it would double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream pipeline which brings natural gas to Germany.
But the project is strongly opposed by several Central European EU members as well as the United States, which see it as a Russian strategy to bypass Ukraine. The additional volume Nord Stream 2 could carry would be roughly equivalent to what Russia currently delivers to the EU through Ukraine, providing Kyiv an important source of transit revenues.
Amos Hochstein, the U.S. special envoy for international energy affairs, told media on December 16 that Washington views the pipeline as part of Russia's "overarching political agenda to get rid of Ukraine as a transit country." He called that an attempt to "undermine the economic stability of the county by non-military means."
The summit in Brussels, which began December 17, has also focused on EU migration policy.
European Union leaders meeting overnight pledged the speedy establishment of an EU border and coastguard force.
The leaders decided that they would agree upon details of the new border force by the middle of next year.
The decision came as they again urged each other to implement measures agreed this year to curb migration across the Mediterranean.
Some leaders, including Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, signaled they wanted to remove a controversial element of the proposal which would give Brussels power to send in EU border guards without a country's consent.
Greece and Italy are under pressure to do more to manage and identify arriving migrants while governments in general have yet to make good on promises to help take in asylum seekers and deport unwanted economic migrants.
(With reporting by Reuters)