Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine, courtesy of the National Security and Defense Council:
Ukraine has a new defense minister confirmed:
Ukraine's parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favor of President Petro Poroshenko's choice for a new defense minister.
The Verkhovna Rada endorsed Stepan Poltorak, who is currently chief of the National Guard, in a 245-1 vote on October 14 .
Poltorak replaces Valeriy Heletey, who was criticized over the Ukrainian military's performance in combating pro-Russian separatists who continue to hold large portions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions after fighting that has killed more than 3,660 people since April.
Heletey handed in resignation on October 12 after only three months on the job.
When announcing his candidate to replace Heletey on October 13, Poroshenko praised Poltorak for his "professionalism and patriotism" and said Poltorak had turned the National Guard into a formidable fighting force in a short time. (UNIAN, Reuters, and AFP)
As our news desk reports, the Russian authorities are holding a census in the occupied region of Crimea:
The population count, which began on October 14 and ends on October 25, is the first on the Black Sea peninsula since Russia annexed it from Ukraine in March.
Crimean Statistics Service official Yelena Tvirovich told journalists that residents will be given a census form with 33 questions.
They include address, type of housing, family status, income, and ethnic identity.
The census comes amid what rights activists say is a crackdown on Crimean Tatars, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group whose members largely opposed the annexation.
According to a 2001 census, Crimea's population was 2.34 million, with more than 60 percent identifying themselves as Russian, 24 percent as Ukrainian, and 12.4 percent as Crimean Tatars.
Russia held a nationwide census in 2010 and plans another in 2020. (RIA Novosti and TASS)