From our news desk:
The U.S. intelligence official whose whistle-blower complaint led to a House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump has agreed to answer written questions from Republicans.
That's all for the live blog today. See you again tomorrow!
Lawmaker to appeal $4 million bail amount in embezzlement case:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
A Ukrainian member of parliament stripped of his immunity on suspicion of embezzlement has said he will appeal a court decision over the weekend that set bail at $4 million.
Speaking to local Hromadske TV, Yaroslav Dubnevych said he didn't know where to find the money in the five-day time frame he was given on November 2 to procure the money.
"In the absence of any evidence, I consider the court's decision unfounded, so we are preparing an appeal. The fight for justice continues!" Dubnevych said in a Facebook post.
Prosecutors, whose motion to have the lawmaker remanded in custody was rejected, haven't said whether they will appeal the High Anti-Corruption Court's ruling.
However, Vitaliy Ponomarenko, a prosecutor at the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, has said that a motion will be filed to have Dubnevych put in pretrial detention if he doesn't post bail in time.
The lawmaker has also been ordered to report any address or employment changes to the authorities and refrain from speaking to witnesses in the criminal case against him. Dubnevych, meanwhile, must wear a monitoring device and had to surrender his passport and other travel documents to the authorities.
Dubnevych, a member of the Za Maybutnye (For the Future) group of lawmakers that political analysts say is affiliated with billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskiy, is suspected of siphoning $3.75 million from the state-run railway company Ukrzaliznytsya.
Parliament on November 1 voted to strip him of immunity and arrest him.
Specifically, Dubnevych allegedly lobbied to have money allocated from the railway company to firms that he controls for procurement orders that led to financial losses at Ukrzaliznytsya.
He denies the allegations as political populism.
He is a three-term lawmaker and previously in 2014 became a member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc in parliament, named after the former president. (w/Hromadske TV)
Exiled Russian journalist Babchenko leaves Ukraine indefinitely:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
A dissident Russian journalist who once facetiously promised to return to his homeland in a U.S.-made Abrams tank has left Ukraine, where has lived in self-imposed exile since fall 2017.
In a Facebook post published over the weekend, Arkady Babchenko gave a vague reason for his departure that implied growing anxiety over his safety after the election of Volodymyr Zelenskiy as president in April.
He referred to a social-media post he made six months ago about "scramming" if Ukraine "chooses candidate X in the presidential election."
He continued: "I'm talking about the general trend in the country.... I wrote this exactly six months ago. I said it, [now] I did it. So, whatโs the problem?"
Babchenko, 42, said he merely changed places with Andriy Portnov, an ally of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who returned from self-imposed exile in Russia after this year's presidential election.
Yanukovych and other senior members of his administration fled to Russia after the 2014 pro-democracy Euromaidan movement.
"Portnov arrived -- Babchenko departed. One troublemaker replaced the other," the journalist said while not mentioning his current location.
Babchenko said that he'll now "stand beyond the fence," while adding that "Ukraine is now just a flood of insurgents," in apparent reference to the war in eastern Ukraine with Moscow-backed separatists.
Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) on May 29 staged an assassination of Bachenko as part of a sting operation to catch people involved in an alleged Russian plot to hill him.
The SBU never presented direct evidence linking Moscow to the alleged plot.
On August 30, 2018 a court in Kyiv sentenced Ukrainian national Borys Herman to 4 1/2 years in prison as the man whom Russian secret services allegedly recruited to organize the murder plot.
Then-SBU head Vasyl Hrytsak said that Herman had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the authorities.
Herman is alleged to have promised $40,000 to a would-be assassin for the killing of Babchenko.
The alleged would-be killer, a former Ukrainian monk turned army veteran named Oleksiy Tsymbalyuk, said he went to the SBU after Herman approached him.
Tsymbalyuk said he worked with the agency to foil the plot.
The SBU operation of faking Babchenko's death was heavily criticized by media watchdogs, journalists, and others who said it undermined the credibility of journalists and of Ukrainian officials.
In his departure post, Babchenko said he still had plans to drive down Moscow's main thoroughfare, Tverskaya Street, in an Abrams tank, "just as I had promised."