Some good news for Ukraine.
An International Monetary Fund official says he is "impressed" by Ukraine's plans for economic changes and measures to avoid bankruptcy and defaulting on its debts.
David Lipton, the IMF's first deputy managing director, met in Kyiv on December 13 with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and financial officials.
Lipton said after the meeting that he was "impressed by their vision for an economic transformation of Ukraine and by their commitment to decisive, front-loaded implementation of their reform agenda."
Poroshenko said in a statement on his website that he assured Lipton of Ukraine's commitment to IMF's austerity demands.
Lipton said a team from the IMF -- which has given Ukraine some $17 billion in financial aid in the past two years -- will finish technical discussions with Ukrainian financial officials by the end of next week.
Peter Pomerantsev in "The New York Times" on truth in Russia.
When I went to work as a TV producer in Moscow in the early 2000s, I would ask my peers which of the “selves” they grew up with was the “real” them. How did they locate the difference between truth and lies? “You just end up living in different realities,” they would tell me, “with multiple truths and different ‘yous.' ”
Life satisfaction since 1991. Includes Ukraine.
Russia is denying its plane nearly hit a passenger jet.
Russia's Defense Ministry has released a statement denying that one of its planes almost struck a passenger jet in midair.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a December 14 statement there is no basis to reports of a near catastrophe occurring.
Konashenkov said there was a Russian military plane over the Baltic Sea on December 12 but said the plane was never closer than 70 kilometers to the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) plane.
SAS spokesman Knut Morten Johansen also said "the safety distance between aircraft hadn’t been exceeded," adding, "This incident has been blown out of proportion."
Sweden's Defense Ministry said on December 13 there had been a near collision between the SAS jet taking off from Copenhagen and a Russian plane.
The Swedish Defense Ministry said the Russian plane had turned off its transponders, which makes the plane undetectable to commercial radar.