More from AFP on Poroshenko's choice for defense minister, Stepan Poltorak:
"I talked to the generals and met regular soldiers, battalion commanders," Poroshenko told the 49-year-old career military man in a televised meeting. "These conversations convinced me about the accuracy of my choice." ...
Some analysts said Poltorak was widely respected in the armed forces and represented a politically safe choice for Poroshenko ahead of the polls in the former Soviet state.
Poltorak "transformed the National Guard from a volunteer corps into a real military," said Kyiv military analyst Georgiy Manchulenko.
From Reuters:
Four Dutch police experts visited the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on Monday to help recover belongings and human remains despite fighting nearby in east Ukraine.
The experts were on hand to advise a Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry team combing the wreckage in the fields where the plane was brought down on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew, a Reuters correspondent on the scene said.
Two-thirds of the victims were Dutch nationals.
As smoke rose from above trees about five kilometers away, despite a cease-fire, the team collected items including books, toothpaste, playing cards, a plastic watch and a stick of antiperspirant but many were too badly burned to identify.
Dutch forensics teams in the Netherlands have identified 272 victims of the crash, but there are still believed to be remains in the area.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Friday he was furious that Dutch investigators had been unable to finish work in the area because of fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces.
A cease-fire has been in force since September 5 in the conflict that has killed more than 3,500 people but fighting has continued sporadically in some areas.
The aircraft, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, is widely believed to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian separatists. Kyiv blames the incident on the rebels and accuses Moscow of arming them. The rebels and Moscow deny the accusations.
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.
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.
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 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.