Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin will held on Monday their first face-to-face meeting, participating in Normandy format summit in Paris.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has signed on 2 December the bill that allows the Kremlin to label journalists and bloggers, but also ordinary individuals, as “foreign agents“, if they receive financial or other material support from foreign media organisations.

The United States and European Union expressed solidarity on Monday with Georgia’s anti-government protesters who took to the streets after the ruling party backtracked on promises of electoral reforms, news wires reported. In the biggest anti-government protest in years, more than 20,000 demonstrators rallied on Sunday outside the parliament building in the capital Tbilisi urging the government to resign and calling for new legislative elections.

Parliamentary polls in Belarus lacked respect for democracy and denied basic freedoms to voters and candidates, international vote observers said on Monday, after the opposition failed to win a single seat, news wires reported.

Russia will return three captured naval ships to Ukraine on Monday and is moving them to a handover location agreed with Kiev, Crimea’s border guard service was cited as saying by Russian news agencies on Sunday.

Belarus began voting on Sunday in parliamentary elections that will be closely watched by the West to see how much leeway President Alexander Lukashenko will allow opposition candidates while keeping his grip on power. Lukashenko, 65, has ruled the east European country with an iron fist for a quarter of a century, but has begun allowing some opposition in a bid to foster ties with the West as relations with Moscow sputter.

Moldova's government was last Tuesday brought down by a no-confidence vote, threatening more instability just five months after pro-Western PM Maia Sandu took office promising to fight corruption, news wires reported. She had formed an uneasy coalition with the Russian-backed Socialist party but relations broke down over a proposed reform to how the top prosecutor is appointed. The government lost the vote with 63 out of 101 lawmakers voting against it.

Ukrainian government troops and Russian-backed separatists have begun withdrawing from a key front-line area in eastern Ukraine. The country foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko said a planned troop withdrawal in the town of Zolote, in the eastern Luhansk region, started today, a confidence-building measure ahead of peace talks that he hopes will take place at the end of November.

Thousands of people marched through central Kiev on Monday to protest against President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's deal with Moscow to grant special status to a pro-Russian rebel-held region of eastern Ukraine as part of efforts to end a five-year conflict there.

About 10,000 people gathered in central Kiev on Sunday to protest a plan for broader autonomy for separatist territories ahead of a high-stakes summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, news wires reported. The protesters, who descended on Kiev's Independence Square known locally as Maidan, chanted "No to surrender!", with some holding placards critical of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky's predecessor Petro Poroshenko, who was trounced in an April election, joined the rally.