Russian TV pulls plug on Zelenskiy's show day after premiere:

By RFE/RL's Russian Service

Russia's state-connected TNT TV channel has pulled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's Servant Of The People sitcom off the air just a day after its premiere in the country.

TNT aired the first three episodes of the first season of the series, in which Zelenskiy plays the main role of a history teacher who unexpectedly gets elected president, on December 11.

TV listings originally showed subsequent episodes were to be aired on December 12 and 13, but late on December 11 they were changed and now show two other TV series -- Interns and SashaTanya -- replacing the Ukrainian sitcom.

TNT, owned by Gazprom-Media, told local media that it had never planned to air all the show's episodes despite what was advertised, saying the decision was a "marketing ploy" to raise the visibility of its subscription service.

State-controlled gas giant Gazprom's media arm is Russia's largest media company, with holdings including several leading television channels, radio stations, and print media.

In its promotional ad for the show, TNT told its 35 million weekly viewers several preemptive words: "The show is a utopia that has nothing to do with Zelenskiy's Ukraine."

Before the plug was pulled, viewers in Russia's earlier time zones in the Far East reported on social media of being able to watch the uncut version of the comedy show.

Later in the day, viewers in the European part of Russia, including Moscow, noticed a scene was cut in the first episode where Zelenskiy's character names a luxury Swiss watch brand whose pronunciation sounds like a crude Russian obscenity that some critics use to describe Putin.

Servant Of the People was scheduled to start airing on the popular Russian online streaming platform Premier on December 12.

The show's airing and then cancelation comes days after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy met face-to-face for the first time in Paris to find a lasting peace in the eastern Ukrainian conflict.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on December 12 that the Kremlin had no involvement in the show's cancelation.

The first season of the show was released in Ukraine in 2015 and Zelenskiy was elected president in May 2019. His Servant of the People party later in the year won an outright majority during parliamentary elections. (w/BBC's Russian Service and Vedomosti)

.

.

Kyiv welcomes, Berlin rejects expected U.S. sanctions on Nord Stream:

By RFE/RL

Ukraine has welcomed expected U.S. sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline as "good news," while Germany, the main beneficiary of the project, rejected the move as "foreign interference."

U.S. Senate and House committees agreed on December 9 to include a bill sanctioning Nord Stream 2 in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), putting up a potential roadblock to the project’s completion.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will have the capacity to carry up to 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Russia to Germany along the Baltic Sea floor. The pipeline is more than 80 percent built and is expected to be completed early next year.

“Ukraine is grateful for 337 votes to support sanctions related to #NordStream2 construction. This is a political project that undermines energy security of #Europe,” the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk also welcomed the move as "good news." The sanctions should "dramatically complicate construction of the Russian pipe," he said.

Kyiv has long protested the project and has lobbied Washington to pass the bill as the pipeline would deprive the country of more than $2 billion in transit fees.

Ukraine also sees the pipeline as undermining existing economic sanctions imposed by the West to compel Russia to resolve a conflict in eastern Ukraine and end its occupation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Germany, however, reacted with irritation, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas calling the U.S. move "foreign interference."

"Decisions on European Energy Policy are taken in Europe," Maas tweeted on December 12. "We reject foreign interference and, as matter of principle, extraterritorial sanctions."

The House and Senate are expected to vote later this month on the NDAA, which often becomes a vehicle for a range of policy initiatives as it's one of only a few pieces of major legislation that Congress approves each year.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, has said that only a few companies in the world have the technology to lay deep-sea pipelines and none of them are Russian, meaning the Kremlin could struggle to complete the project should the foreign companies obey the U.S. sanctions bill.

The United States has sought to stop pipelines designed to carry Russian energy to Europe in the past but failed each time. (w/dpa and Kyiv Post)

Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

Lawmakers extend Donbas special-status law until end of 2020:

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

KYIV -- Ukrainian lawmakers have approved a bill extending the law on the special status of local self-governance in areas of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk regions until December 31, 2020.

The bill was approved by 320 lawmakers at the parliament’s session on December 12. The legislature has 450 deputies in total and only a simple majority of 226 was needed to pass the legislation.

The document was offered to the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, by Davyd Arakhamia, the head of the ruling Servant of the People party's representation, and his first deputy, Oleksandr Korniyenko, on December 10.

The law on the special order of local self-governance in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, generally known as the Donbas, was adopted first in September 2014 for a period of three years after Russia-backed separatists incited an insurgency in the Donbas, where more than 13,000 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict since.

Weeks before inciting separatism in the Donbas, Russia forcibly seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula after sending in troops and staging a referendum that was deemed illegitimate by more than 100 countries.

The law has been prolonged twice since then and was set to expire on December 31, 2019.

.

.

.

Another Ukraine item from our news desk (courtesy of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service):

Death Toll In Ukraine College Fire Rises As Director Arrested For Negligence

ODESA, Ukraine -- Rescuers in Ukraine have found three more dead bodies amid the rubble of a burned-out technical college in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, bringing the number of deaths to 16.

The State Emergency Service said on December 12 that the bodies were extracted from the debris overnight.

The regional police said there are no more missing people after the fire.

The fire broke out on December 4 at 10:12 a.m. local time on the third floor of the six-story Odesa College of Economics, Law, and Hotel and Restaurant Business, eventually engulfing an area of 4,000 square meters.

The building was completed in 1914 and has landmark status.

A fire inspection of the building conducted in June 2014 found gross violations with orders to correct them, prosecutors said.

Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk has said that each family that lost someone in the fire will receive the equivalent of $8,500.