Parnas will comply with impeachment probe:
By RFE/RL
Lev Parnas, an indicted Ukrainian-American businessman who has emerged as a key figure in the impeachment inquiry into U.S. Donald Trump, has apparently changed his mind and is ready to cooperate with a congressional investigators, his lawyer told AP and Reuters.
Parnas, who is charged with federal campaign-finance violations that are unrelated to the impeachment inquiry, "will honor" the House of Representatives' requests "to the extent they are legally proper, while scrupulously protecting Mr. Parnas's privileges, including that of the Fifth Amendment," his lawyer, Joseph Bondy, said on November 4, referring to the right to avoid self-incrimination.
Parnas, his indicted business partner Igor Fruman, and Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, are associates who have been involved in back-channel meetings with current and former Ukrainian officials regarding investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and Democratic Party activities in the 2016 presidential election.
Giuliani and the House leadership declined comment to Reuters.
Parnas, 47, features in a 317-page transcript that the House released the same day of the testimony that Maria Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, gave to lawmakers that outlined efforts to oust her.
It offered insight into closed-door House hearings that are probing whether Trump has committed impeachable offenses regarding his administration's efforts to get Ukraine’s leaders to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.
During nine hours of testimony on October 11, Yovanovitch stated that Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov had warned her that Parnas and Fruman, along with Giuliani, wanted her removed.
The career foreign service officer said Avakov had told her to "watch her back."
"I guess for -- because they wanted to have business dealings in Ukraine or additional business dealings," Yovanovitch told congressional investigators. "I didn't understand that, because nobody at the embassy had ever met those two individuals [Parnas and Fruman]. And, you know, one of the biggest jobs of an American ambassador of the U.S. Embassy is to promote U.S. business...if legitimate business comes to us...we promote U.S. business."
Earlier, while counseled by a different lawyer, Parnas had said he wouldn't comply with House requests for records and testimony.
He and Fruman both pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan federal court last month for allegedly taking part in a scheme that funneled money through a shell company to donate funds to a pro-Trump election committee, among other charges they are facing.
Parnas has also helped Giuliani meet with former and current Ukrainian officials regarding his investigation into the Bidens.
The Odesa-born businessman has worked as an interpreter for Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash, who is fighting extradition to the United States from Austria on corruption charges that he denies, CNN reported.
He was hired as a translator around the time when Firtash retained the services of husband-and-wife legal duo Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who are well-known Republicans and frequent defenders of Trump on cable news. (w/National Public Radio, CNN, Reuters, and AP)
Amid shelling, school near town where troops withdrew evacuated:
By RFE/RL
A primary school has been evacuated amid an artillery barrage 13 kilometers from Zolote, a town in the easternmost Luhansk region where Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists have withdrawn their forces ahead of a pending summit to find peace in the Donbas conflict.
At its evening briefing, the Ukrainian military stated that the "enemy used a wide spectrum of weapons, ranging from small arms to mortars of different calibers and 122-millimeter artillery."
During the shelling, the schoolchildren in the town of Novotoshkivske were taken to a bomb shelter and no casualties were reported among the civilian population.
Zolote is one of three settlements in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv and Russia-backed separatists are supposed to pull back forces and weapons before four-way peace talks commence between Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia to seek an end to the Donbas conflict, which has killed more than 13,000 people.
Close to 100 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed this year, according to local news site Censor.net, which keeps a monthly tally of casualties.
Nine Ukrainian military personnel were killed in October, including Yaroslava Nykonenko, 36, a woman who served in the elite security brigade of the military's General Staff.
Forces on both sides have already withdrawn from Stanytsya Luhanska, a crucial civilian crossing point in the Luhansk region where a damaged bridge is being repaired over a river to ease pedestrian traffic in the clogged area.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been monitoring the conflict, including the withdrawal of forces.
"I welcome the completion of the withdrawal of forces and hardware from the disengagement area of Zolote and the start of demining activities," Martin Sajdik, the OSCE's special envoy in Ukraine, said on November 4.
"Encouraged by the progress in Stanytsia Luhanska and Zolote, I urge the sides to do everything necessary for relaunching the process of disengagement in the area of Petrivske as soon as possible.”
Ukraine's military has said technical inspections, demining, and clearing Zolote of explosive projectiles are scheduled to last until November 9.
A withdrawal of troops has been postponed in the Donetsk region town of Petrivske, where fighting has resumed -- the agreement to meet for the four-way talks stipulates that fighting must cease for seven days before the withdrawal process can begin. (w/Censor.net and Ukrayinska Pravda)
Former U.S. ambassador tells lawmakers she felt "threatened" by Trump:
By Mike Eckel
Marie Yovanovitch, who was abruptly recalled as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year, told congressional investigators that she felt unsupported by the State Department prior to her departure, and threatened by President Donald Trump afterward.
Yovanovitch, who testified before U.S. lawmakers last month, was the latest in a series of current and former U.S. officials who have been called for questioning as part of the House of Representatives' inquiry into whether Trump should be impeached.
Excerpts of her October 11 testimony had previously been leaked, but the Democratic-led committees spearheading the impeachment effort released the entire transcript of her appearance on November 4.
A veteran Foreign Service officer, Yovanovitch has said she was the victim of a shadowy smear campaign, conducted by allies of Trump, when she was prematurely recalled from her post in Kyiv in May.
Two months after she left, Trump had a phone call with Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he criticized Yovanovitch as "bad news."
During that same phone call, Trump also asked Zelenskiy "to do us a favor," by investigating a Ukrainian energy company whose board included the son of Trump's political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
At the time, the Trump White House had suspended nearly $400 million in crucial military aid to Ukraine to support its fight against Russia-backed separatists; the White House's chief of staff has said that the aid was withheld to force Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory involving the 2016 hacking of the U.S. Democratic Party.
That phone call, and a whistle-blower account of it, helped spur the impeachment effort being led by the Democratic-led House.
According to the newly released transcript, Yovanovitch last year learned that she was becoming the victim of a conservative smear campaign that had painted as her being insufficiently loyal to Trump.
She also said that she was aware of some of the key Trump allies involved in the effort to malign her, including Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. And she said she was aware of the interest by Giuliani and some of his associates in investigating Biden and the energy company Burisma "with a view to finding things that could be possibly damaging to a presidential run.”
Asked for her reaction when she learned how Trump criticized her during the phone call with Zelenskiy, Yovanovitch said she was shocked that Trump would speak about her, or any ambassador, in that way. She also said she felt threatened.
Seeking Support
Prior to her being recalled, she had sought support, through intermediaries, from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but received none, she said. She also turned to the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, for advice about how to get more backing in Washington.
He counseled her to "tweet out there that you support the president."
"It was advice that I did not see how I could implement in my role as an ambassador, and as a Foreign Service officer," she said.
While she was in Ukraine, Yovanovitch, like previous U.S. ambassadors, was vocal in her support of Ukraine's efforts to clean up rampant corruption among government agencies and major state companies.
At one point earlier this year, Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko publicly accused Yovanovitch of giving him a list of Ukrainian officials that Washington ordered should not be prosecuted. He later recanted the accusation.
Lutsenko's role in trying to push out Yovanovitch appeared last month in an indictment handed down by U.S. prosecutors against two U.S. businessmen who were born in the former Soviet Union. The two businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, had enlisted a Texas congressman to lobby the State Department to recall Yovanovitch from her post in Kyiv.
Asked about Fruman and Parnas, Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she thought they were looking to expand business interests in Ukraine "and that they needed a better ambassador to sort of facilitate their business's efforts here."
Yovanovitch also said she was told by Ukrainian officials late last year that Giuliani was in touch with Lutsenko "and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me."
House lawmakers also released the transcript from another U.S. official who testified before the inquiry, Michael McKinley, who resigned as a top adviser to Pompeo.
McKinley said he pressed top State Department officials to publicly back Yovanovitch, according to the transcript.
McKinley said he spoke directly with Pompeo and other senior State Department officials about issuing a public statement. Eventually, he said, he was told that they did not want to "draw undue attention" to Yovanovitch.
"The timing of my resignation was the result of two overriding concerns," McKinley told lawmakers, according to the transcript: "the failure, in my view, of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry; and, second, by what appears to be the utilization of our ambassadors overseas to advance domestic political objectives."
And with that, we'll call it a day. See you again tomorrow!
Hope And Anxiety As Troops Pull Back In Eastern Ukraine
Troops and civilians are adjusting to a new reality after forces began disengaging along the line of separation between the Ukrainian military and Russia-backed separatists. Amid hopes for peace there's also distrust and anxiety.