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Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli held a meeting in Baluwatar on Tuesday.

During the meeting, the duo discussed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and to end the House deadlock.

Nepali Congress Vice-President Purna Bahadur Khadka among other leaders accompanied Deuba in the meeting.

Similarly, senior Vice-Chairman Ishwor Pokharel, Vice-Chairman Bishnu Paudel and Deputy General Secretary Bishnu Rijal attended the meeting from the UML.

Leaders said that the meeting discussed the ways to endorse the $500 million grant agreement from the Parliament.

A Nepali Congress leader said that the UML unofficially agreed to help endorse the MCC.

Saying that the MCC was registered in the Parliament Secretariat during a government led by the UML, PM Deuba, who is also the President of the Nepali Congress, urged Oli to help ratify the compact.

In response, Oli said that they would continue obstructing the House until their demands are met. But the has agreed to create a conducive environment to pass the MCC amid the obstruction, a leader, who attended the meeting, said.

Russia’s parliament approved treaties with two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, opening the way for an immediate Russian troop deployment despite the threat of Western sanctions including the blocking of a major new pipeline, Associated Press reported.

The lower house’s approval of President Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognise the two regions’ independence increased Western fears of war that have rattled global financial markets, hit Russia’s rouble and pushed oil prices to a seven-year high.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said his country may sever diplomatic ties with Russia, and the United States and the European Union discussed new sanctions as Ukraine reported continued shelling in east Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz put the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany on ice, a measure widely considered the toughest Europe is likely to take against Moscow at this stage.

“We must reassess the situation, in particular regarding Nord Stream 2,” Scholz told a news conference with the Irish leader in Berlin. The pipe, built to bring gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, has been completed but has yet to win regulatory approval.

Tensions over a Russian troop build-up near Ukraine’s borders have risen sharply since Putin announced on Monday that he was recognising the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists.

He also signed a decree on the deployment of Russian troops to “keep peace” there.

The United States said Monday it is sending all of its diplomats in Ukraine to Poland out of security fears, hours after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into two rebel-backed regions in the country, NDTV reported.

Earlier, the Kremlin leader recognized the independence of two rebel-held areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk areas of Ukraine. He then instructed his defense ministry to assume a "peacekeeping" role in the separatist regions.

"Today the Department of State is again taking action for the safety and security of U.S. citizens, including our personnel. For security reasons, Department of State personnel currently in Lviv will spend the night in Poland," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

"We strongly reiterate our recommendation to US citizens to depart Ukraine immediately. The security situation in Ukraine continues to be unpredictable throughout the country and may deteriorate with little notice," he added.

The move comes just over a week after the US relocated its embassy in Kyiv to Lviv, citing the "dramatic acceleration" in the build-up of Russia's forces on the border.

Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to enter the Russian-controlled areas of southeast Ukraine following a decision to recognise the territories as independent states, The Guardian reported.

The decision to dispatch his troops to perform “peacekeeping duties” will be viewed in Ukraine and by other western allies as an occupation of the region and likely trigger tough sanctions and a Ukrainian military response.

The deployment was revealed in the text of two treaty documents that Putin signed with the leaders of the separatist republics on Tuesday.

The third article of the treaties provided for the “implementation of peacekeeping functions by the armed forces of the Russian Federation” in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, which Ukraine and most of the world views at its sovereign territory.

On Monday night Ukrainian officials said Russian troops may have already entered separatist territory. The officials said local people in the town of Makiivka, 15kms west of rebel-held Donetsk, saw what appeared to be Russian armoured vehicles on the move.

One source - who declined to be named - said “a huge convoy of Russian armoured personnel carriers and other equipment has been travelling for one and a half hours”. It was spotted heading north towards the city of Yasynuvata, also in the Donestk region.