Here is a news item on Crimea from RFE/RL's Armenian Service
The Grozny Air civil aviation company, based in the Russia's Chechnya region, is pressing ahead with plans to launch regular flights from Yerevan to Crimea, despite protests from Kyiv.
Timur Shimayev, an executive officer for Grozny Air, told RFE/RL on October 29 that the firm's inaugural flight to Crimea is scheduled for November 17.
But Ukraine's Ambassador to Armenia, Ivan Kukhta, told reporters in Yerevan on October 29 that any commercial flights between Yerevan and Crimea must first be approved by Kyiv.
Kukhta's statement came five days after a spokesman for the Armenian government's Civil Aviation Department, Ruben Grdzelian, said that a Russian regional airline had not been allowed to launch flights between Armenia and Crimea since the Ukrainian peninsula was annexed by Russia in March.
Moscow's annexation of Crimea has been condemned as illegal by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations General Assembly.
And here's another video, this time of a prisoner exchange, in which the Kyiv side handed over eight separatist fighters for seven Ukrainian servicemen and four civilians:
Another update from our news desk on the reported shelling near Mariupol:
Pro-Russian separatists reportedly shelled the position of Ukrainian government troops in southeastern Ukraine today, despite an almost two-month-old cease-fire agreement.
Authorities in the port city of Mariupol say military positions located near the village of Talakovka were targeted by conventional artillery and Grad rockets that were fired from the separatist-controlled region of Donetsk.
Casualties were reported among troops.
The cease-fire agreement signed in early September ended most fighting between the two sides -- although battles at the Donetsk airport, in Mariupol, and in villages near the city of Luhansk continue on an almost daily basis.
The UN says more than 3,700 people have been killed in six months of fighting between government forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes.
(Interfax, UNIAN)
Russia's state oil company in trouble:
Russian state-controlled energy giant Rosneft says its profits during the third quarter of 2014 crashed dramatically after Western sanctions were imposed over Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis.
Rosneft said on October 29 that its third-quarter net profits fell by 99.3 percent -- down to $24.4 million -- compared to the same three-month period in 2013.
Rosneft’s access to Western financing and technology -- needed to service its debts and bring East Siberian fields online -- has been cut by the sanctions.
Rosneft also has been hurt by the falling value of the Russian ruble.
Russian Economic Development Minister Aleksei Ulyukayev said on October 29 that the government could not satisfy a request from Rosneft for a further bailout to help it service debts.
In August, Rosneft asked the Russian government for a huge financial bailout to help it repay debts of about $45 billion. (Reuters and AFP)