Before meeting Putin, Italy's Renzi visits site of Nemtsov's slaying:
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has laid flowers at the site where opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was shot dead in Moscow six days ago.
Nemtsov was killed on a bridge close to the Kremlin.
Renzi visited the spot and left six carnations wrapped up in a green-white-red ribbon, the colours of the Italian flag. He made no statement.
He later met with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and President Vladimir Putin.
Renzi held talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv on March 4.
The stated aim of Renzi's visit is to help international efforts to stabilize eastern Ukraine and urge Russia to cooperate in return for an easing of international sanctions.
The United States and the European Union adopted several rounds of sanctions after accusing the Kremlin of fomenting unrest in Ukraine.
The measures have affected the Italian economy, which counts Russia as one of its top export markets. (dpa and Reuters)
Ukraine's parliament votes to increase size of army:
The Ukrainian parliament has voted in favor of a bill to boost the size of the military by one-third, to 250,000.
The bill, which was submitted to parliament by President Petro Poroshenko on March 2, was supported by 270 lawmakers in the 423-member chamber.
Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, speaking before the vote, said, "Whoever votes against this law or doesn't support this law is working for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, for Russian aggression, so that the foot of the Russian occupier steps on our land in Donbas and our Crimean soil."
An explanatory note to the bill said that the extra troops will form two operations command centers, 11 brigades, four regiments, 18 battalions,16 squadrons, and 13 platoons each charged with different tasks.
The bill only needs Poroshenko's signature to become law. (Reuters, Interfax)
By RFE/RL
The Russian prison service reportedly said that jailed Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who has been on a hunger strike for nearly three months, has agreed to eat chicken broth.
The Interfax news agency quoted the Federal Penitentiary Service's press office as saying on March 5 that "today, Savchenko agreed to follow doctors' recommendations on her health and agreed to eat chicken broth."
A lawyer for Savchenko, Mark Feigin, said on Twitter that he would go see Savchenko in pretrial detention and look into the recommendation.
"Until then, I have nothing to report," Feigin said.
Savchenko says she was kidnapped by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine in June and illegally transferred to Russia, where she has been charged with complicity in the killing of two journalists who died covering the conflict.
Russia has rejected repeated Western calls for the release of Savchenko, who began a hunger strike on December 13.
With reporting by Interfax
By RFE/RL's Russian Service
Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has criticized the Western response to "crude violations" of a cease-fire by Russian-backed rebels who ignored the truce deal to seize the strategic town of Debaltseve in a major offensive.
Kuchma, Kyiv's representative at sporadic talks involving Ukraine, Russia, the rebels, and the OSCE, spoke to RFE/RL in an interview on March 4.
He said that after the leaders of France and Germany brokered a February 12 deal for a cease-fire and other steps to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, "the Russians...continued the war" with a bloody offensive in which rebel forces took Debaltseve.
"I don't understand the reaction of the international community -- if it is clear and obvious to the naked eye that a peace treaty has been crudely violated, and the reaction is: 'Come on, guys, let's get along.' I don't understand such an approach."
"If we continue to look at what is happening in the Donbas through the prism of such views, I don't think we will achieve the end goal -- and the end goal is peace," he said.