Meanwhile, in Crimea:
Crimea's Moscow-backed leader, Sergei Aksyonov, has acknowledged that four members of the Muslim Tatar minority on the annexed peninsula are missing but asserts they were not abducted.
Speaking on October 16, Aksyonov criticized missing Crimean Tatars by saying some of them had fought in Syria, implying they were Islamic militants.
At least three Crimean Tatar men have been found dead since Russia annexed the Black Sea region from Ukraine in March.
Human Rights Watch said earlier this month that three Crimean Tatars remained missing after "hostile encounters" and that some of those found dead had apparently been tortured.
Pressure on Crimean Tatars, a Turkic-speaking group that largely opposed the annexation, has increased in recent weeks.
Last month, Russian authorities seized the Crimean Tatar assembly, the Mejlis, and searched homes of leading members of the Tatar community.
(TASS, Interfax)
#Putin threatens West not to put pressure on #Russia over #Ukraine, or else, mentions nuclear arsenal again. Classic line from Kremlin bully
— Myroslava Petsa (@myroslavapetsa) October 16, 2014
Here's another update from our news desk:
Russia will allot some 3.3 trillion rubles (about $80 billion) from the state budget for defense spending in 2015, according to the chairman of the defense committee in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
Vladimir Komoyedov told the Russian news agency Interfax on October 16 that defense spending for the next year would be some $20 billion more than this year, but he added that his committee foresees slight reductions in spending for 2016 and 2017.
Komoyedov said the amount to be spent on defense in 2015 was some 4.2% of Russia's GDP.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on October 7 that Russia's defense spending plans needed to be "more realistic" in light of international sanctions imposed on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.
A three-year draft budget reportedly calls for a 5.3 percent cut in defense spending in 2016, the first reduction since 1998.
(Interfax, FT)