Ukraine updates: Russia taking 'active actions' near Bakhmut

Occupying Russian authorities have auctioned off the Crimea vacation home belonging to the family of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

There were only two bidders. The 120-square-meter (1,292 square feet) apartment in the luxury resort of Yalta, in the south of the peninsula, sold for 44.3 million rubles ($450,000), almost double the starting bid.

The previous owner was Zelenskyy's wife, Olena. She bought the apartment in 2013, a year before Russia seized the peninsula. At the time, Zelenskyy was still working as an actor.

The apartment was expropriated earlier this year after a change in the law passed unanimously by the Crimean parliament.

The buyer, Olga Lipovetskaya, who lives in Moscow, said she bought the property because of its location and the Crimean climate. The apartment overlooks the Black Sea and Livadia Palace, the summer residence of Nicholas II, Russia's last tsar.

Moldova has accused major Russian news media of taking part in an information war against the country and has blocked access to their web sites.

In a decree, Moldova's Intelligence and Security Service listed 31 websites to be blocked immediately for "online content used in the war of information against the Republic Of Moldova." Earlier this month, 22 Russian websites were already blocked.

The new list included 14 Russian news sources, including newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and website Lenta.ru, along with news agencies TASS and Interfax. Moldova also suspended the licenses of six domestic television stations in a separate decree.

Moldova, a small country with a Romanian-speaking majority sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, has accused Moscow of trying to overthrow its pro-Western government since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. It holds local elections later this week.

Russian troops occupy a small, mainly Russian-speaking breakaway region, and Moldova's main opposition parties have long been tied to Moscow. Russia denies meddling in Moldova's internal affairs and has accused its president, Maia Sandu, of fomenting hostility.

The G7 is preparing a   ban on Russian diamonds, following US sanctions imposed on Russia's state diamond miner Alrosa. The G7 countries are mulling the details of a further ban to halt indirect sales. The deal is expected to come in by the end of October.

Russia is the world's biggest producer of rough diamonds.

The industry heads have yet to agree on how and where to check a diamond's country of origin, as well as what sizes of stones, rough or polished, should be under scrutiny.

The first US-made F-16 fighter jets  the Netherlands is donating to Ukraine will arrive in Romania's training center within two weeks, outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

"I expect the Patriot missiles to be delivered shortly, to aid Ukraine in the upcoming winter. And the same speed applies to the F-16s," Rutte said during a video call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"The first ones will be shipped to the training center in Romania within the next two weeks so that day we will get ready for further training," he added.

Ukraine is also expected to receive F-16s from Denmark, Norway and Belgium.

"What is happening now in Gaza and the terrorist attack on Israel and all the follow-up from that will not, shall not and cannot distract us from what is happening between you and Russia, the fact that you are fighting off the Russia aggression," Rutte said.

Ukrainian pilots are training to fly F-16 fighters in the US. In August, the US agreed to send F-16s fighter jets to Ukraine once the training is completed.

Ukraine said it had struck part of Russia's air defense system in annexed Crimea overnight, as Moscow said it repelled a major attempted missile strike on the peninsula.

"The Armed Forces successfully hit a strategic object of the air defense system on the western coast of occupied Crimea," the Ukrainian army's strategic communications unit said on social media. It gave no further details and Russia gave no official comment.

Later on Monday, Russia said its air defenses had successfully shot down eight Ukrainian missiles fired towards Crimea.

"On October 30, at around 13:00 (1000 GMT), an attempted attack by the Kyiv regime with eight Storm Shadow cruise missiles at targets on the Crimean peninsula was stopped," Russia's defense ministry said, adding that all missiles were shot down.

Storm Shadows are British-supplied missile systems with a range of over 250 kilometers (155 miles) that enable Kyiv to hit targets deep behind the frontlines in the east and south of Ukraine.

Russia has been using Crimea as a supply base for its war against Ukraine, which it has been waging for more than 20 months. In recent weeks, Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on military assets in Crimea.

Russian shelling and missile strikes killed an elderly woman and injured five people in the southern Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Odesa, Ukrainian officials reported.

Missiles damaged an administrative building and equipment in a shipyard in the Black Sea region of Odesa in the morning, local prosecutors said, adding that four workers had been hurt.

"The attack caused a fire, which was quickly extinguished by our rescuers," Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper said in a Telegram messenger post.

Meanwhile, an 85-year-old woman was killed in heavy overnight shelling of the front-line city of Kherson, Roman Mrochko, head of the city's military administration, said on Telegram. "In the central district of the city, high-rise buildings and one of the social institutions were hit," Mrochko added.

The attacks followed attempted Russian drone strikes on southern, central, and northern Ukraine. Kyiv's military said air defenses destroyed all 12 drones and two missiles launched against the Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Dnipro regions.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu accused the West of wanting to expand the conflict in Ukraine to the Asia-Pacific region, Russian state media reported.

Speaking at the Xiangshan Forum, China's biggest military diplomacy conference, Shoigu said the US-led NATO alliance was "covering up the buildup of military force in the Asia-Pacific region with an ostentatious desire for dialogue."

"Having provoked an acute crisis in Europe, the West is seeking to spread conflict potential to the Asia-Pacific region, and in several directions," he added.

Shoigu also said US forces' exchanges of missile launch information with Tokyo and Seoul were intended to deter Russia and China.

According to Shoigu, Moscow was ready for talks on the post-conflict settlement of the Ukraine crisis and coexistence with the West, but only once Western countries stopped seeking Russia's strategic defeat.

The commander of Russia's airborne forces, Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, has been named as the new commander of Russia's Dnipro military group in Ukraine, the state-run TASS news agency reported on Monday, citing a source.

Teplinsky replaces Colonel General Oleg Makarevich, the newspaper Izvestia reported separately.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said on October 19 that Ukrainian forces appeared to have broken through Russian lines on the left, southern bank of the Dnipro River. Russia said it had foiled attempts to cross the river, however.

Teplinsky was appointed in June 2022 to head the elite airborne forces, which had suffered heavy casualties in the earliest days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

British military intelligence said he was dismissed from a senior role in Ukraine in January, but later reinstated. It said he was likely to be one of the few senior generals "widely respected by the rank-and-file."

Russia has significantly bulked up its forces around the devastated city of Bakhmut in the east and has switched its troops from a defensive posture to taking "active actions," a Ukrainian military commander said.

Russia captured Bakhmut, the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the 20-month war, in May. Ukraine has been on the counteroffensive since June to try to retake occupied land in the south and east, including the town.

"In the Bakhmut area, the enemy has significantly strengthened its grouping and switched from defense to active actions," General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, wrote on Telegram messenger.

He described the situation in the east as difficult, with Russian forces particularly active near the northeastern Ukrainian-held town of Kupiansk. According to the Ukrainian general, Moscow's troops there were trying to advance simultaneously in several directions. 

In its daily report on the fighting, the Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces continued in their attempts to regain control over Andriivka to the south of Bakhmut, which Kyiv's forces said they had retaken in September.

Russia has also been pushing in recent weeks to encircle and capture the eastern town of Avdiivka, near Donetsk.

dh/dj (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)