Good morning. We'll get the live blog started this weekend with a couple of RFE/RL news items that were filed overnight.
Ukrainian President Chastises Mob Who Attacked COVID-19 Evacuees
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has criticized a mob that attacked buses carrying dozens of Ukrainians evacuated from China amid concerns about the COVID-19 virus.
Hundreds of people, fearing the evacuees could bring the virus to Ukraine, attacked the buses with rocks and metal bars near a National Guard clinic about 300 kilometers east of the capital, Kyiv.
Several hundred police were mobilized to the scene, and about two dozen protesters were arrested. Most of the detainees were released after being held briefly.
Nine police officers were reportedly injured.
"We keep saying that Ukraine is in Europe," Zelenskiy said in Kyiv. "But yesterday it seemed like we were in Europe in the Middle Ages."
Zelenskiy also said "we know that someone deliberately and purposefully sowed panic among the people."
The 45 evacuated Ukrainians, 27 nationals from other countries who were also evacuated from China, and the medical staff and aircraft crew will spend the next two weeks in quarantine at the clinic, officials said. None of them has shown symptoms of the virus.
With reporting by dpa and Interfax
Marie Yovanovitch, Former U.S. Envoy To Ukraine, Signs Book Deal
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who played a key role in the House of Representatives hearings on the impeachment of President Donald Trump last November, has signed a deal to write a book about her career.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt told the AP news agency on February 21 that it had struck a deal with Yovanovitch to publish her planned memoir.
The book, currently untitled, will focus on her long diplomatic career, in which she served in places such as Kyiv and Mogadishu, Somalia. It is expected to be published in early 2021.
Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from Kyiv in May 2019 following an intense campaign to oust her that was coordinated by Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
After her recall following a 33-year career in the foreign service, Yovanovitch retired from the State Department in January.
In November 2018, Yovanovitch testified before the House impeachment inquiry into Trump's actions with Ukraine, accusing Giuliani of organizing an "irregular channel" of diplomacy in Ukraine that was aimed, in part, at promoting Trump's domestic political interests.
"Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want," the 61-year-old Yovanovitch told the inquiry.
Trump denied any wrongdoing and was acquitted in a historic Senate impeachment trial.
Yovanovitch was appointed U.S. ambassador to Kyiv in 2016 by President Barack Obama.