Bit of a spat brewing here:
Here's another item from our news desk:
Ukraine Lawmaker Faces 'Treason' Inquiry Over Back-Channel Peace Plan
KYIV -- Ukraine's top prosecutor says his office is investigating a previously obscure lawmaker on suspicion of treason after he presented associates of President Donald Trump with a controversial peace plan for Ukraine and Russia.
Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko told reporters on February 21 that Andriy Artemenko may have committed a treasonous offense in designing a plan to lease Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula to Russia in exchange for Kyiv regaining control of land held by Russia-backed separatists in the east.
The peace-for-sanctions-relief plan Artemenko claimed he co-authored thrust him into the spotlight on February 20 after The New York Times reported that it had wound up on the desk of Trump's short-lived national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
A document announcing the inquiry shared on Facebook by Lutsenko accuses Artemenko of carrying out subversive activities against Ukraine.
Such actions are punishable in Ukraine by 10 to 15 years in prison.
Artemenko, who was ousted on February 20 from the Radical Party, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Reporting by Christopher Miller
Another item from our news desk. It seems Moscow and Kyiv are at loggerheads again, this time over the late Vitaly Churkin:
Ukraine, Russia Spar Over UN Security Council Reaction To Churkin Death
Moscow and Kyiv are at odds over a statement issued by the UN Security Council mourning the February 20 death of Russia's long-time envoy to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin.
Russia angrily accused Ukraine, which holds the rotating presidency of the 15-nation Security Council this month, of blocking the adoption of a "presidential statement" honoring Churkin.
“This is wild and inhuman,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 21. He also accused Ukraine of acting in an "un-Christian" way, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "May God judge them."
Kyiv rejected the criticism, saying that the Security Council issued a press statement but suggesting that a formal presidential statement would have been out of place.
"We didn’t block anything," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maryana Betsa said.
She said that "a statement was issued for the press, as has been done in such cases in the past. There haven’t been many such cases. But there was no precedent for a separate political statement.”
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been extremely high since Russia forcibly annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and began providing active political and military support to separatists fighting the government in eastern Ukraine.
In November 2016, the lead prosecutor for the International Criminal Court issued a finding that the conflict "is equivalent to an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation."
Russia is one of five veto-wielding permanent Security Council members.