If you've been regularly following the live blog, you'll know that there had been much speculation yesterday that the self-styled leader of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic Aleksandr Zakharchenko was going to resign at a news conference. As it turned out he denied that this was going to happen and he also had some rather incendiary comments to make about the cease-fire. Here are some translated quotes from RFE/RL's news desk:
"Let me say right away that I did not submit my resignation and at this moment I am not going to resign. So everything that the mass media has published is not really true."
"I declare: No one under any circumstances can force me to give an order to retreat. I consider all the territory [of Donbas] currently under control of Ukrainian authorities temporarily occupied and treat it accordingly. The cease-fire had been agreed so that Ukraine could understand that the conflict cannot be resolved through war and that they have an opportunity to leave all our illegally occupied territories calmly and peacefully."
"I don't know how the cease-fire is holding here or if it is holding at all. As prime minister I now have to go to the scene of shelling. You know, I have recently been to one and you won't believe it but I have a growing desire to pick up a machine gun, go to [Donetsk] airport and send a bullet through someone with my own hands."
Meanwhile, in Crimea...
Crimea's parliament has elected Sergei Aksyonov head of the annexed peninsula in a unanimous vote.
All 75 lawmakers supported Aksyonov in the vote on October 9.
Aksyonov, 41, has served as acting head of Crimea since mid-April, weeks after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine following a referendum denounced as illegitimate by Kyiv, the West, and the UN General Assembly.
He played a key role in the annexation process that began after Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president sympathetic to Moscow, was toppled by antigovernment protests in Kyiv.
All 75 lawmakers in parliament supported Aksyonov in the vote on October 9.
Ukraine considers Crimea its territory, occupied by Russia, and says elections held by Russian authorities there are illegal.
Aksyonov has made tough comments targeting Crimea Tatars, who say their minority has faced abuses under Russian rule.
(Interfax, ITAR-TASS)
The Interpreter: 21 ways life in #Crimea has changed since the #Russian Anschluss http://t.co/EMP90WaZTL
— Kyiv Post (@KyivPost) October 9, 2014
Life in Donetsk "even worse than before the ceasefire," people tell BBC's @oivshina #Ukraine http://t.co/tiAk2hr3JC pic.twitter.com/ul9piT3MuJ
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) October 9, 2014
"On Ukraine, President Obama should be more like Jimmy Carter." http://t.co/rvNVSXyGjW
— Radosław Sikorski (@sikorskiradek) October 9, 2014
Ukraine Foreign Ministry says 64 Ukrainian soldiers and 36 civilians killed despite ceasefire http://t.co/yYBc4uLbCL
— Kyiv Post (@KyivPost) October 9, 2014
Ukraine's Hromadske TV says four mortar attacks have been launched on Donetsk airport:
Бойовики здійснили чотири мінометні удари по аеропорту Донецька – прес-центр АТОhttp://t.co/z16zxwxrKf pic.twitter.com/sD1COCgVBW
— Hromadske.TV (@HromadskeTV) October 9, 2014
Kiev taxi: shoot all our political leaders, bring in new ones, shoot them all, then new ones, shoot them, then MAYBE something will change
— Gulliver Cragg (@gullivercragg) October 9, 2014
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this update from RFE/RL's news desk:
Ukraine has urged the European Union not to accept pro-Russian rebels carving out a de facto state in the east of the country, warning it could destabilize Europe.
Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also urged Moscow to dissuade separatists from holding their own elections in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk next month.
Speaking to Reuters on October 8, Klimkin said local people would do better to vote in local elections organized by Kyiv in December.
Klimkin said "fake elections" organized by the rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk would reinforce impressions that eastern Ukraine is becoming a long-term "frozen conflict" like the Moscow-backed breakaway regions of Transdniester in Moldova or Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.
Klimkin said he was not trying to "blackmail" Western European states into stepping up actions, such as economic sanctions, against Russia, or to get NATO to increase non-military assistance to Kyiv.
Klimkin was speaking in Brussels, where he and other senior Ukrainian officials met EU and NATO counterparts.
Among those with whom Klimkin held talks was NATO's new Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
"The NATO secretary general has changed, but the priority importance of Ukraine remains the same," Klimkin tweeted after the meeting.
Klimkin said the country would seek European Commission funding to help eastern residents survive the winter with limited access to essential supplies.
In Washington, Ukrainian Central Bank chief Valeria Gontareva met with the boss of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde in hope of speeding up the delivery of a $17.1-billion loan and even expanding that amount.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told his cabinet that Gontareva would ask the IMF "to modify its program taking current realities into account".
The two-year IMF arrangement is part of a global $27-billion package approved in April to help the new leaders avert bankruptcy and pull Ukraine out of its third recession in six years.
But the economic slide has only accelerated and the economy is now expected to shrink by up to nine percent this year.
Last month, the IMF itself warned Ukraine may need an additional $19 billion in short-term assistance should the conflict in the east stretch through the end of next year.
(Reuters, AFP)
That ends our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Wednesday, October 8, 2014. Check back here in the morning for our continuing coverage or here for all the latest news.