From RFE/RL's News Desk:
Ukraine says five of its soldiers have been killed and 29 wounded in fighting with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours.
Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on January 29 that separatists targeted government positions with shells and rockets in more than 100 separate attacks.
The latest casualties followed claims by the rebels that they have nearly encircled government forces in the strategic town of Debaltseve, which straddles a road junction between the separatist provincial capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk.
EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels later on January 29 to discuss whether to extend current sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine and whether to approve new punitive measures.
Diplomats told RFE/RL that Greek objections had blocked consensus at a preparatory meeting on January 28.
Ambassadors gathered again on January 29 before the foreign ministers' meeting to try to hammer out an agreement.
VIDEO: Ukrainian soldiers in the Luhansk region say they have come under heavy fire from pro-Russian separatists, who are reported to be gaining ground. In the town of Stanytsya Luhanska, thousands of residents have fled their homes as shells and tank fire hit residential areas. (By Levko Stek of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
A Russian woman has been jailed on suspicion of treason after she called the Ukrainian Embassy with information about possible Russian troop movements.
Svetlana Davydova's husband and a defense lawyer said she was detained last week in the town of Vyazma, some 240 kilometers west of Moscow, and placed in pretrial detention at Lefortovo prison in the capital.
Lawyer Andrei Stebenev said the 36-year-old mother of seven "called where she was not supposed to call and said what she was not supposed to say."
Her husband, Anatoly Gorlov, said Davydova phoned the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow last April and said that a military base near their home had emptied out, suggesting the soldiers may have been deployed to Ukraine.
Russia denies involvement in the conflict, which has killed more than 5,100 people in eastern Ukraine since April, despite what Kyiv and NATO say is incontrovertible evidence Moscow has sent troops and weapons to help separatists fighting government forces.
Gorlov said his wife had opposed the conflict since it began.
By RFE/RL's Belarus Service
MINSK -- Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka says that Moscow is deeply involved in the "crisis" in Ukraine and expressed fear that the war there could spill over into Belarus and Russia.
Speaking at an annual news conference on January 29, Lukashenka suggested Russia had a special responsibility to stop the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.
"My only wish is that Europe...the United States, Russia, which is involved in this crisis to an extreme degree, and Belarus -- and there is a possibility that these phenomena may spread into the territories of Russia and Belarus -- do their best to stop that war," Lukashenka said.
Lukashenka also said Belarus will "never fight with the West to please Russia."
Belarus and Russia have close military ties and are partners in several groupings including a bilateral Union State.
Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its support for the separatists, which Kyiv and NATO says extends to sending troops and weapons, has alarmed Russia's neighbors.
A tweet from Ukraine's ambassador to Austria:
NEWS FLASH:
The Russian Investigative Committee says a deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, Ahtem Ciygoz has been detained on suspicion of organizing "mass disorder" in Simferopol in February last year.