UPDATE: Yovanovitch Says Trump "false claims" behind her removal:
BY RFE/RL
Former U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv Marie Yovanovitch has reportedly told lawmakers gathered for a closed-door deposition as part of an impeachment inquiry that President Donald Trump applied pressure on the State Department to remove her from her post based on "unfounded and false claims."
Yovanovitch, who arrived at Capitol Hill on October 11 to appear before lawmakers looking into Trump's dealings with Ukraine, said in an opening statement obtained by the media that she was "abruptly" recalled in May and told the president had lost confidence in her.
According to a White House summary of a July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Trump described Yovanovitch as "bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news." Zelenskiy agreed with Trump that she was a "bad ambassador," according to the call summary.
"Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives," Yovanovitch told Republican and Democratic legislators at her appearance.
She said an official had told her there was a "concerted campaign against me" and that Trump had been pressuring officials to remove her for almost a year.
Prior to her arrival on October 11, it had not been certain whether Yovanovitch would make the appearance before the House of Representatives committees.
Democratic critics accuse Trump of abusing his power to seek foreign help to manufacture dirt on a political enemy, former Vice President and current Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, based in part on a whistle-blower complaint and the summary of his call to Zelenskiy.
On October 8, the State Department ordered U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland not to appear before the House Intelligence, Foreign, and Oversight and Reform committees.
That move raised already simmering tensions between the White House and congressional Democrats conducting the probe, which could lead to the impeachment of the president, something that has happened only twice in U.S. history.
Earlier on October 11, lawyers for Sondland said their client would honor a subpoena and testify on October 17 after failing to show three days earlier after being directed by the State Department not to voluntarily show up for the hearing.
Yovanovitch, a veteran diplomat, was removed from her ambassadorial post two months ahead of schedule, reportedly over a disagreement with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer who had become involved in Ukraine dealings.
"Today, we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within," Yovanovitch reportedly said in her prepared statement. "State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees." (w/Reuters, AP, AFP)
Putin questions Zelenskiy's "will" to ensure pullback in eastern Ukraine:
By RFE/RL
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of lacking the "political will" to ensure a pullback of heavy weaponry in eastern Ukraine, in a swipe at the leadership in Kyiv amid recent signs of possible progress toward ending a five-year conflict between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists.
"We've agreed on the pullback of the forces, but the current president [of Ukraine] still can't ensure the pullback," Putin said at a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in Turkmenistan on October 11.
Putin's remark comes a week after Kyiv, along with Moscow and the separatists in eastern Ukraine, signed an agreement on pulling back heavy weaponry as one of the steps toward achieving a peace settlement.
Known as the Steinmeier Formula, the plan lays the groundwork for reinvigorating the larger peace deals known loosely as the Minsk accords, and the first major international summit on the Ukraine conflict in three years.
Zelenskiy's embrace of the plan has drawn opposition from right-wing groups, some veteran groups, and activists in Ukraine who equated the decision with capitulation.
Since the agreement, shelling from both sides has continued along the so-called line of contact.
"He just can't," Putin said in Ashgabat, adding, "[Ukrainian] nationalist military units arrived there and publicly declared: 'If the army leaves these positions, we will stand there. The army is not leaving.'"
Russia maintains that the pullback needs to occur before a summit scheduled for this month between Putin, Zelenskiy, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Several Ukrainian opposition parties and far-right groups have opposed Zelenskiy's commitment to pull back weaponry in two locations near the separatist-held areas and criticized his pledge to back local elections in those areas, arguing that he's ceding too much.
"There won't be any elections under the barrel of a gun," Zelenskiy has said of implementing the formula, adding. "There won't be any elections there if the troops are still there."
Zelenskiy, who won the presidency in April on pledges to seek an end to the conflict, scored a major domestic political victory last month with a prisoner exchange that saw the return of 35 Ukrainians from Russian custody.
The exchange, the first major prisoner swap between the two countries since 2017, was praised by the West.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and has been accused by Kyiv and NATO of backing armed separatists in Ukraine's east, where more than 13,000 people have died from the conflict since April 2014.
Moscow has repeatedly denied its role in funding, arming, or training the rebels despite overwhelming evidence, insisting that Kyiv faces a civil war. (w/AP, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS)