Dems to probe ‘alarming’ Ukraine texts

WASHINGTON — A House committee chairman said his panel will investigate what he says are “profoundly alarming” text messages that have raised questions about the possible surveillance of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch before she was ousted by the Trump administration last spring.

House Democrats on Tuesday night released a trove of documents they obtained from Lev Parnas, a close associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The messages show that a Trump donor named Robert F. Hyde disparaged Ms. Yovanovitch in messages to Mr. Parnas and gave him updates on her location and cellphone use.

Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that the messages are “profoundly alarming” and “suggest a possible risk” to Ms. Yovanovitch’s security in Kyiv before she was recalled from her post.

Putin’s power shake-up

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a constitutional overhaul Wednesday to boost the powers of parliament and the Cabinet, a move signalling Mr. Putin’s intention to carve out a new position for himself after his current term ends.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev submitted his resignation hours after Mr. Putin discussed the constitutional amendments during his state of the nation address.

The Russian leader thanked Mr. Medvedev for his service but said the prime minister’s Cabinet had failed to fulfill all of its objectives. In televised remarks, Mr. Putin said Mr. Medvedev would take up a new position as a deputy head of the presidential Security Council.

Mr. Medvedev, a longtime close associate of Putin’s, has served as Russia’s prime minister since 2012. He spent four years before that as president in 2008-12, becoming a placeholder when Mr. Putin had to switch into the prime minister’s office because of constitutional term limits on the presidency.

Plane hit by 2 missiles

Security camera footage verified by The New York Times shows that two missiles fired 30 seconds apart took down Flight 752, killing all aboard.

The New York Times has verified security camera footage on Tuesday that shows, for the first time, that two missiles hit Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8. The missiles were launched from an Iranian military site around 8 miles from the plane.

The new video fills a gap about why the plane’s transponder stopped working, seconds before it was hit by a second missile.

An earlier Times analysis confirmed what Iran later admitted: that an Iranian missile did strike the plane. The Times also established that the transponder stopped working before that missile hit the plane. The new video appears to confirm that an initial strike disabled the transponder, before the second strike, also seen in the video, around 23 seconds later.

Neither strike downed the plane immediately. The new video shows the airliner on fire, circling back toward Tehran’s international airport.