From RFE/RL's News Desk:
Russian news agencies cited Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as saying on January 4 that Russia would take part in talks in Berlin on January 5 with representatives of Ukraine, Germany, and France.
The leaders of those four countries -- which have been at the center of diplomacy over the conflict in eastern Ukraine -- are to meet in Kazakhstan on January 15, and their foreign ministers may meet later this week.
Karasin said Russia would be represented at the Berlin meeting by Viktor Sorokin, the head of the Foreign Ministry department responsible for relations with Ukraine.
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Sunday, January 4. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
A big explosion was reported overnight in southern Ukraine:
An explosion has occurred in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa near a building that was coordinating aid to military forces battling pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Reports said the explosion happened late on January 4 outside the office of the coordination center of social organizations assisting Ukrainian fighters involved in the "counterterrorism" operations.
The pro-government group Avtomaidan Odesa posted information on its Facebook site saying no one was injured in the blast.
Local officials said many of the windows of the building were blown out and cars parked outside the building were damaged.
A criminal investigation has already been launched.
The explosion near the coordination center follows a January 3 explosion at the Odesa-Peresyp railway station.
That explosion targeted freight cars carrying petroleum products.
Ukrainian investigators are calling the railway station explosion a "terrorist act."
Odesa has been hit by a series of explosions since early last month. (UNIAN, Interfax, and TASS)
"Normandy" group set to meet today in Berlin to discuss conflict:
A meeting of the so-called Normandy format group is due to take place in Berlin on January 5, where representatives of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany will discuss possibilities for a settlement in Ukraine.
Kyiv has said the director of the department of politics and communications, Oleksiy Makeyev, would attend and Russia said it was sending the director of the Foreign Ministry's second department for CIS affairs, Viktor Sorokin.
Makeyev was already in Berlin on January 4 and said all participants in the talks would present their plans for promoting the implementation of the Minsk accords.
The representatives hope to make enough progress so that a higher-level meeting of the Normandy format group can be held in the near future.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said at the end of December that he hoped a meeting of the Normandy format group could be held at the summit level in the Kazakh capital, Astana, in mid-January. (TASS and Interfax)
An investigation by The New York Times into the final hours of Mr. Yanukovych’s rule — based on interviews with prominent players, including former commanders of the Berkut riot police and other security units, telephone records and other documents — shows that the president was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone else.