Changes at the top in Donetsk
According to Interfax, Oleksandr Kikhtenko is replacing Serhiy Taruta as governor of Donetsk region.
Taruta had recently criticized Poroshenko's peace agreement and had also courted controversy by penning an open letter to Putin on his birthday (he called on Putin to have the "courage" and "wisdom" to stop the war in Donbas).
Putin is in Minsk, speaking at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Eurasian Economic Union.
There is still no confirmation from Kyiv on the line of demarcation that separatist leaders say Kyiv has agreed to. TASS Russian state news agency quotes Ravil Khalikov, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic:
"According to the [Ukrainian] variant, we were to yield a number of inhabited localities to them. But in the long run, our variant was adopted."
!!! BREAKING NEWS !!!
It seems the head of the Donetsk Regional Administration Serhiy Taruta has just been fired.
ГОРЯЧАЯ НОВОСТЬ: Таруту уволили с должности http://t.co/vyVkkh8zn9 pic.twitter.com/tFXlZfm237
— Новости Донбасса (@novostidnua) October 10, 2014
Here is a map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine today, issued by Kyiv's National Security and Defense Council. (Click to enlarge):
Speaker of Swedish Parliament @UrbanAhlin, with peers from POL, IRL, LIT and DK, honouring people who died on Maidan. pic.twitter.com/Wn18iA7PpX
— A von Beckerath (@vBeckerath) October 10, 2014
Meanwhile, in Russia (from RFE/RL's news desk)...
Russia's State Duma is calling on the international community to investigate what it describes as "war crimes" committed during the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In a nearly unanimous vote on October 10, the lower parliament house adopted a resolution urging the organizations including the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe to investigate what it says are mass graves discovered near the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
Last month, pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk said they had found two graves containing the bodies of some 400 people they said were victims of military operations by government forces.
Ukrainian officials denied the claim, saying they never had control of the site, and it has not been independently confirmed.
In September, Russian media cited what reports referred to as an OSCE expert as saying hundreds of bodies had been exhumed from mass graves in the Donetsk region, but the OSCE said the man cited had never worked for the organization.
The United Nations says at least 3,660 people had been killed since the conflict began in April.
(Interfax, TASS)
By the way, here's a link to a feature by RFE/RL's Claire Bigg on the bogus OSCE expert claiming he'd been at a mass grave containing hundreds of bodies.
At CIS summit Uzbek leader slams Petro Poroshenko for not coming: "It seems he just can't decide if it's beneficial to stay in CIS or leave"
— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) October 10, 2014
The Hollywood Reporter: Documentary filmmakers equip #Ukraine's volunteers in struggle against pro-Russian insurgents http://t.co/M97h1k7HJ2
— Kyiv Post (@KyivPost) October 10, 2014