From our news desk:
Former Ukrainian lawmaker Mykola Rudkovskiy has been sentenced to 2 years in prison in Russia on charges of attacking the Russian Embassy in Kyiv in 2014.
The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office said on December 9 that the Moscow City Court found Rudkovskiy guilty of attacking the Russian Embassy along with unidentified individuals in the Ukrainian capital on June 14, 2014.
According to the statement, Rudkovskiy was arrested on Russian territory in September 2018.
Critics have accused Russian authorities of fabricating charges against Ukrainian citizens, who openly oppose Moscow's illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
Russia seized the Black Sea peninsula in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum deemed illegitimate by at least 100 countries. In April that year, Russia threw its support behind armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, where more than 13,000 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict since.
Latest from our news desk on the scheduled meeting in Paris:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, have arrived in Paris for long-awaited talks on resolving the military conflict in eastern Ukraine that has left more than 13,000 people dead since 2014.