NATO reports "unusual" Russian flight activity:
NATO says that it tracked and intercepted four groups of Russian warplanes “conducting significant military maneuvers” in international airspace close to the borders of the European Union during the previous 24 hours.
NATO’s SHAPE military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, said, "These sizeable Russian flights represent an unusual level of air activity over European airspace."
It said the planes included strategic bombers, fighters, and tanker aircraft.
They were detected over the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Black Sea on October 28 and 29.
Russian bombers flew south all the way to international airspace west of Portugal and Spain.
Norwegian, British, Portuguese, German, Danish, and Turkish fighters were scrambled to intercept and identify the Russian planes.
Planes from the non-NATO nations of Finland and Sweden also responded.
Since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, tensions between NATO and Russia have risen to the highest level since the Cold War. (AP and AFP)
The Ukrainian president's party is claiming victory in Sunday's parliamentary vote:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s bloc is claiming victory in the country's October 26 parliamentary elections.
Volodymyr Groysman, a leader of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, was quoted as saying on October 29 the political group was leading with support from a majority of Ukrainians.
Vitaliy Kovalchuk, also from the bloc, said it will be "the basis" of a future coalition.
With 98 percent of the ballots counted on October 29, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's People's Front party was leading with 22.2 percent, while Proshenko's bloc had 21.8 percent.
But Poroshenko's bloc fared better in first-past-the-post voting, and according to election commission data, was positioned to take 133 parliamentary seats compared to 81 seats for Yatsenyuk's People's Front.
Yatsenyuk earlier suggested he was likely to continue as Ukraine's prime minister after a new government is formed. (UNIAN, Reuters, and Interfax)
U.S. urges Russia to free Ukrainian pilot:
Washington has called on Russia to immediately release Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was captured in eastern Ukraine and later handed over to Russia, where she is charged with killing two Russian journalists.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on October 29 that Savchenko’s pretrial detention in Russia, which was extended this week by a Moscow court, was "an outrage" and violated Russia’s commitments under the Minsk agreements.
Psaki also said Washington was "deeply concerned about new criminal charges expected to be filed" against Savchenko.
Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian separatists on June 18 near the eastern Ukrainian village of Metalist before turning up in Russian custody in early July.
Under Russian court orders, she has been held since October 10 for "psychiatric evaluation" at the notorious Serbsky Institute, a facility behind a wave of diagnoses used to lock up dissidents during the Soviet era.