LATEST: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office says the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, and France have urged Russian President Vladimir Putin not to recognize elections being held on November 2 by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Sanctions over Ukraine continue to take their toll on Russia:
The Russian central bank has said it will raise interest rates from 8 percent to 9.5 percent as Western sanctions and falling oil prices have sent the Russian ruble plummeting.
The Bank of Russia's board of directors took the decision to raise interest rates at an October 31 meeting.
The central bank had increased the rate to 8 percent in late July, following increased to 5.5 percent in March and 7.5 percent in April.
The United States, European Union, and other countries have imposed successive rounds of sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.
Russia annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine in March, and Kyiv and NATO accuse Moscow of aiding pro-Russian separatists with troops and arms during a conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 3,700 people in eastern Ukraine since April. (TASS, Interfax, and AFP)
Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, courtesy of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council:
Ukraine's Security Service has charged "Machine Gun" Porechenkov:
The OSCE's media-freedom envoy speaks out on the Russian-actor-firing-machine-gun-in-Donetsk story: