[T]he man who has driven the impeachment inquiry for several months — primarily behind closed doors, in the Special Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the U.S. Capitol — did not show up in person.

Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was present, as were counsel for both the majority and minority on the Intelligence Committee.

Collins observed: "Mr. Nunes is here! His staff is here! The leading headline is there: 'Schiff Report' — but where's Mr. Schiff?"

He noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had testified about his report before the committee, earlier in the year, and that Independent Counsel Ken Starr presented his report in the 1998 impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton.

Schiff is under increasing scrutiny — not only for his staff's early contact with the so-called "whistleblower," but also because his committee's reports included phone records of Nunes's calls, along with calls involving the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and reporter John Solomon, among others.

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Asked about it after the 'Normandy Four' meeting in Paris on Monday, Putin said that to call the man a "Georgian" is not quite right, as he is not an ethnic Georgian and had in fact fought for the Chechen militants in the Caucasus.

"He was a militant, a very rough and bloodstained man," Putin told reporters, noting that he was wanted for an attack that killed 98 people, and was one of the masterminds of the 2004 Moscow metro bombings.

Putin's remarks align with the reporting of US government outlet RFE/RL, which said that Khangoshvili had led a "few dozen fighters" in Chechnya and fought alongside Shamil Basayev - the notorious terrorist leader responsible for the 2002 hostage taking in Moscow's Dubrovka Theater, the 2004 Beslan school massacre, as well as a series of suicide bombings across Russia.

The Russian president said his government will cooperate with the German police as they investigate the killing. He noted, however, that Russia had asked Germany "more than once" to arrest and extradite the "bandit and murderer" Khangoshvili, as he was wanted for terrorism, but the German authorities refused.

"It would be good to cooperate in other circumstances, not just in time of tragedy," Putin said.

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The Saker: What about the Donbas republics? How would you compare the situation in Novorussia with what is taking place in the Ukraine?

Dmitry Orlov: The term "Novorossiya" (New Russia) goes back several centuries, to the time Catherine the Great expanded the Russian Empire to include Crimea and other southern possessions. What Lenin reassigned to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were Russian lands, Donetsk and Lugansk regions among them.

There are several other Ukrainian regions that are almost entirely Russian-Kharkov and Odessa specifically-but Donetsk and Lugansk are not Ukrainian in the least. This is why, after the government overthrow of 2014, when it became clear that the intentions of the Ukrainian nationalists who seized power in Kiev were to oppress the Russian part of the population, these two regions decided to strike out on their own. The Ukrainian nationalists reacted by launching a civil war, which started exactly five years ago, and which they have lost. To save face, they have declared their defeat the result of a "Russian invasion" but have been unable to present any evidence of it. Had the Russians invaded, the result would have been a replay of Russia's action in Georgia in August of 2008, which lasted about a week.

The Ukrainians are continuing to lob missiles into the territories of Donetsk and Lugansk, causing sporadic civilian casualties. Once in a while they stage minor skirmishes, suffer casualties and pull back. But mostly their "Anti-Terrorist Operation," which is what they are calling this civil war, has turned into a propaganda initiative, with the mythical "Russian invaders" invoked at every turn to explain their otherwise inexplicable string of defeats.

After some amount of effort by NATO instructors to train the Ukrainians, the instructors gave up. The Ukrainians simply laughed in their faces because it was clear to them that the instructors did not know how to fight at all. It was then decided that the "road map" for Ukraine's inclusion in NATO should be set aside because the Ukrainians are just too crazy for sedate and sedentary NATO. The trainers were then replaced with CIA types who simply collected intelligence on how to fight a high-intensity ground war without air support-something that no NATO force would ever consider doing. Under such conditions NATO forces would automatically retreat or, failing that, surrender.

Meanwhile, the two eastern regions, which are highly developed economically and have a lot of industry, have been integrating ever more closely into the Russian economy. Their universities and institutes are now fully accredited within the Russian system of higher education, their currency is the ruble, and although in terms of international recognition they remain part of the Ukraine, it is very important to note that the Ukraine does not treat them as such.

The Ukrainian government does not treat the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk as its citizens: it does not pay their pensions, it does not recognize their right to vote and it does not provide them with passports. It lays claim to the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk but not to the people who reside there. Now, genocide and ethnic cleansing are generally frowned upon by the international community, but an exception is being made in this case because of Russophobia: the Russian people living in Donetsk and Lugansk have been labeled as "pro-Russian" and are therefore legitimate targets.

Russia has been resisting calls to grant official recognition to these two People's Republics or to provide overt military support (weapons and volunteers do filter through from the Russian side without any hindrance, although the flow of volunteers has been slowing down of late). From a purely cynical perspective, this little war is useful for Russia. If in the future the Ukraine fails completely and fractures into pieces, as appears likely, and if some of these pieces (which might theoretically include not just Donetsk and Lugansk regions but also Kharkov, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk) clamor to join Russia, then Russia would face a serious problem.

You see, over the past 30 years most Ukrainians have been content to sit around drinking beer and watching television as their country got looted. They saw no problem with going out to demonstrate and protest provided they were paid to do it. They voted the way they were paid to vote. They didn't take an issue with Ukrainian industry shutting down as long as they could work abroad and send money back. They aren't enraged or even embarrassed by the fact that their country is pretty much run from the US embassy in Kiev. About the only ones with any passion among them are the Nazis who march around with torches and sport Nazi insignia. In short, these aren't the sort of people that any self-respecting country would want to have anything to do with, never mind absorb them into its population en masse, because the effect would be to demoralize its entire population.

But the people of Donetsk and Lugansk are not like that at all. These coal miners, factory workers and cab drivers have been spending days and nights in the trenches for years now, holding back one of Europe's larger militaries, and fighting for every square meter of their soil. If the Ukraine is ever to be reborn as something that Russia would find acceptable, it is these people who can provide the starter culture. They have to win, and they have to win without any help from the Russian military, which can squash the Ukrainian military like a bug, but what would be the point of doing that? Thus, Russia provides humanitarian aid, business opportunities, some weapons and some volunteers, and bides its time, because creating a viable new Ukraine out of a defunct one is a process that will take considerable time.

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