News via AFP on the court decision today to delay the trial of Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko as she purportedly undergoes mental fitness testing at the hands of Russian authorities:
A court in Moscow has delayed hearings on a captured Ukrainian military officer's appeal against the authorities' decision to put her in a mental clinic for checks.
The 33-year-old Nadezhda Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian insurgents during fighting in eastern Ukraine in June and landed in Russian custody the following month.
Russian investigators accused Savchenko, a Ukrainian air force officer, of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has strongly demanded Savchenko's release, and her name has become symbolic for the battle against the insurgency.
On Monday, a Moscow district court was due to consider Savchenko's appeal against investigators' moves to have her undergo psychiatric checks, but put off the hearings for a month as she remained in a Moscow mental clinic.
An image from the protest by outgoing Ukrainian National Guard conscripts near the presidential building in Kyiv today. "Demobilization" is among the demands there and at a similar demonstration in Kharkiv.
From Reuters:
Russia and China signed energy, trade and finance agreements on Monday proclaimed by Moscow as proof that a policy turn to Asia is bearing fruit and will help it to weather Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.
The 38 deals, signed on a visit to Moscow by Premier Li Keqiang, allow for deeper cooperation on energy and a currency swap worth 150 billion yuan ($25 billion) intended partly to reduce the sway of the U.S. dollar.
They are among the first clear successes of the eastward shift, ordered by President Vladimir Putin to avoid isolation over the sanctions, since the vast nations reached a $400 billion, 30-year natural gas supply agreement in May.
"I consider it important that, in spite of the difficult situation, we are opening up new possibilities," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said after the signing ceremony.
In a sign that mistrust has still not been completely buried, Li was less effusive, even when holding out the prospect of a deal in 2015 to build a second pipeline along what is called the Western route to ferry Russian gas to China.
A planned concert in Baku by a Russian rock musician and vocal critic of Moscow's actions in Ukraine has been canceled.
Andrei Makarevich, front man for the legendary band Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), has had concerts in several Russian cities canceled since he spoke out.
Pro-Kremlin lawmakers and commentators in Russia branded him a traitor after he gave benefit concerts in Ukraine for refugees from the eastern part of the country, where government forces have been fighting pro-Russian separatists and Russian troops, according to Western leaders and some Russian sources.
Makarevich wrote on Facebook on October 13 that Baku city authorities canceled the concert by him and "The Creole Tango Orchestra" in order "to avoid pro-Ukrainian actions."
The concert was scheduled for October 31 at Baku's Heydar Aliyev Palace, a venue named after the late former president whose son, Ilham Aliyev, succeeded him shortly before his death in 2003.
Makarevich gigs have been nixed in St. Petersburg, Kazan, and Samara.
His new song "My Country Has Gone Mad" proved highly polarizing.
From our newsroom, via Vesti.az, crimea.kz, and e-crimea.info:
The graves of Turkish soldiers and officers killed in the Crimean War have been vandalized in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.
The leader of Azeri community on the Black Sea peninsula, Raqim Qumbatov, said today that metal Islamic crescents and stars on gravestones in a Sevastopol cemetery had been removed or damaged.
A video report by online news site Vesti.az also showed that road signs pointing to the graveyard and a memorial to Turkish soldiers who died during the 1853-56 Crimean war had been removed.
Qumbatov said that before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, the signs and cemetery had been cared for properly.
Crimean authorities have not commented on the vandalism.
It comes amid what activists is a crackdown on Crimean Tatars, a Muslim minority group whose members largely opposed the annexation.
TASS quotes annexed Crimea's acting governor in Sevastopol as saying the first ship arrived today in what should eventually be a regular ferry service between that Crimean port and the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. Today's ferry was carrying 80 freight trucks, the report says.
The acting governor, former deputy commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet Sergei Menyailo, was also quoted as saying four ferries with a capacity of 140 freight trucks should soon by plying the route twice a week.