From last night:
Former Kazakh president says working on Putin-Zelenskiy talks:
Nursultan Nazarbaev, Kazakhstan's former president, says he is working to arrange a face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Speaking at a conference in the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan, on November 12, Nazarbaev said Zelenskiy had agreed to take part in such a meeting, while Putin had been informed about it.
Russia-Ukraine relations have been tense since Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and began supporting pro-Moscow separatists in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
"If they [Putin and Zelenskiy] need a neutral site for talks, I have offered Kazakhstan," Nazarbaev said.
Russia has denied that its armed forces have been involved in the territories controlled by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's east, where more than 13,000 people have been killed since 2014.
Nazarbaev's office said earlier that the former president discussed by phone with the Russian leader the possibility of holding a Putin-Zelenskiy summit. It remains unclear when exactly Nazarbaev talked about the issue with Zelenskiy.
On November 11, Putin discussed plans for holding a summit between Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Kremlin said earlier, without mentioning Putin-Zelenskiy talks.
Known as the Normandy format, the last four-way talks took place in October 2016. (Kazinform, Tengrinews, and Reuters)
High-ranking defense official arrested in faulty-bulletproof-vest case:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
A Kyiv court during a custody hearing on November 11 ordered a major general at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to six months in pretrial detention or be released on bail set at $3.1 million in a public-procurement embezzlement case involving substandard bulletproof vests.
Dmytro Marchenko, the main directorate chief at the Defense Ministry, is accused with four other suspects of causing about $4 million in losses to the state when purchasing 100,000 sets of military uniforms, 20,000 inferior bulletproof vests, and defective tents for the army at inflated prices.
Three out of five bulletproof vests were found to be pierceable during testing, State Bureau of Investigations (DBR) chief Roman Truba said on his Telegram messaging channel.
In July, the DBR published audio recordings of Defense Ministry officials speaking about the specific brand of vests that were bought, their low quality, of having knowledge bullets could pierce them, and that they didn't meet technical standards.
The Pechersk district court of Kyiv has yet to preside over custody hearings for the other four suspects, who have not been named.
Truba added that more suspects will be arrested in the case in the future.
In June, the DBR conducted 40 searches at the residences of dozens of Defense Ministry officials related to purchases of military gear at inflated prices. (w/Ukrayinska Pravda and Interfax)