France says return of Ukrainian ships builds "trust" ahead of Putin-Zelenskiy summit:
By RFE/RL
France has welcomed Russia's return of three Ukrainian naval vessels that were seized by Moscow in the Black Sea last year, saying that the move would facilitate a planned December summit in Paris on resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
"The gesture...contributes to strengthening the trust in the dialogue between Russia and Ukraine," the French Presidency said in a November 18 statement following a telephone conversation between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia handed the ships over to Ukraine earlier in the day.
The statement added that the two leaders had discussed "preparations" for the December 9 summit in Paris between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Putin. The meeting will also be attended by Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Paris summit will be the first meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy, who was elected president of Ukraine in April.
The conflict in parts of eastern Ukraine between Kyiv and separatist formations that are militarily, politically, and economically supported by Moscow has left more than 13,000 people dead since 2014. The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled in November 2016 that the war in eastern Ukraine was "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."
The three Ukrainian naval vessels -- two small armored ships and a tugboat -- were seized by Russia on November 25, 2018 near the Kerch Strait, off the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia claimed they had violated Russia's territorial waters, a claim that Ukraine has denied.
Moscow released the 24 Ukrainian crewmen who were aboard the ships on September 7 as part of a prisoner exchange with Kyiv.
The Paris summit, a revival of the so-called Normandy Format for resolving the war in Ukraine, will be the highest-level negotiations on the conflict since 2016.
Following the phone call between Putin and Macron, the Kremlin issued a statement saying the December summit should help "quickly and fully" implement a 2015 peace plan that was brokered by France and Germany in Minsk.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow expected France to stress that the Paris summit "underlines that the Minsk agreement is inviolable and has no alternative." (w/AP, AFP, and TASS)
Investigators want Poroshenko's immunity stripped:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigations (DBR), a newly established law enforcement body tasked with investigating high-level crimes, has requested that former President Petro Poroshenko be stripped of immunity.
In a November 18 statement, the DBR said it had officially informed the Prosecutor-General's Office that Poroshenko was suspected of abuse of power and of calling for the overthrow of the government.
The DBR asked the Prosecutor-General's Office to initiate the cancelation of Poroshenko's immunity in parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. The DBR gave no further details.
Poroshenko, who lost the election to Volodymyr Zelenskiy in April, enjoys immunity as a lawmaker.
A law establishing the rules under which the lawmakers' immunity can be lifted is expected to go into force as of January 1, 2020.
The DBR said earlier that Poroshenko was possibly involved in 13 criminal cases under investigation.