10 Belarusians suspected of fighting in Ukraine, minister says:
Belarusian authorities have launched investigations of about 10 Belarusian citizens suspected of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the country's foreign minister says.
Ihar Shunevich told reporters in Minsk on December 13 that the men under investigation were suspected of fighting as mercenaries on both sides of the Ukraine conflict.
Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk has killed more than 9,700 people since April 2014.
The announcement comes a day after a group of alleged neo-Nazis went on trial in Belarus on charges including inciting ethnic hatred.
The defendants included Stanislau Hancharou, who fought against separatists in Ukraine's east.
There have been numerous reports that many volunteers and mercenaries from former Soviet republics are fighting on both sides of the conflict. (BelTA, Interfax)
Savchenko rejects criticism for meeting with separatists:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Ukrainian lawmaker Nadia Savchenko says she will continue her efforts to free Ukrainians held captive by Russia-backed separatists despite any fallout from her recent meeting with separatist leaders in Minsk, Belarus.
Savchenko acknowledged on December 12 that she had met with separatists last week for consultations on prisoner swaps. The move triggered rebukes from her Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party for what it called "negotiating with terrorists."
Speaking to RFE/RL on December 13, Savchenko, a military aviator who was jailed in Russia in 2014 and became a national symbol of resilience before her release in May, rejected reports that her meeting with separatist leaders Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky were secret. She said there had been months of preparations.
She also rejected critics' claims that her talks with the separatist leaders was a step toward legalizing "terrorists."
"Nobody can legalize what is illegal," Savchenko said.
Savchenko also said there were no grounds to expel her from the parliamentary National Defense Committee, as urged by some lawmakers, and that what Ukraine needed now is peace.
According to Savchenko, two Russian representatives responsible for humanitarian issues were present at the talks and that a chief goal was to outline the number of people held by both sides.
She said that a separatist claim that some 700 separatist fighters are in Kyiv's custody was far from the truth.
Savchenko described the talks as positive and said that they will continue, but that no specific date had been set for the next round.
Putin suggests sanctions obstacle to peace deal with Japan:
By RFE/RL
Russian President Vladimir Putin says that sanctions imposed on Russia over its actions in Ukraine are an obstacle to talks on a peace treaty with Japan.
Tokyo-Moscow relations have been hampered for decades by a dispute over a group of islands that Soviet troops seized at the end of the World War II. Russia calls them the Southern Kuriles; Japan calls them the Northern Territories.
Lingering tensions over the islands have prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty to formally end the war.
Putin heads to Japan on December 15 to discuss the territorial dispute and economic cooperation with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In an interview with Japanese media that was published on the Kremlin website on December 13, Putin said Moscow and Tokyo must agree on conditions for a peace treaty based on trust, adding that large-scale joint economic activities could help achieve that.
But he suggested sanctions were a significant obstacle.
"How are we going to further develop economic relations on a new, much higher...level, given the existence of a sanctions regime?" he asked.
On December 12, Japanese Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko ruled out any economic deals that would undermine unity of the Group of Seven (G7) economic powers on sanctions imposed on Russia after the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in March 2014. (/Reuters)