October 25:
In a move that is likely to further undermine Western pressure, Iran is planning a new economic arrangement with the Kremlin. The Islamic Republic's official Fars News Agency reports that a senior Iranian lawmaker has announced that the two countries plan to switch bilateral transactions away from the U.S. dollar. "Replacing dollar with [the] ruble in bilateral and multilateral transactions between Iran and Russia tops the agenda of the upcoming visit of an Iranian delegation to Russia," Hadi Qavami, a member of Iran-Russia Parliamentary Friendship Group, has confirmed.
October 27:
Ukraine's parliamentary elections have concluded with what amounts to a resounding victory for pro-Western forces. The Wall Street Journal reports that, based on exit polling, the political bloc of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko is estimated to have won in excess of 23 percent of the electoral votes, putting it in a position to solidify its rule and codify a ruling coalition. The most striking result of the vote, however, was a confirmation of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic trajectory. "More than three-quarters of voters who took part in the election powerfully and irreversibly supported Ukraine's course toward Europe," Poroshenko noted in a public address following the election.
Amid rising concern over renewed violence in Ukraine, Poland has decided to reinforce its common border with Ukraine. The plan involves a transfer of troops from the country's west to its eastern border in response to what officials in Warsaw are terming "the biggest security crisis since the Cold War." "The geopolitical situation has changed, we have the biggest crisis of security since the Cold War and we must draw conclusions from that," RT reports Poland’s Defense Minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, telling The Associated Press.
In a major move to lessen its energy dependence on Russia, Lithuania has inaugurated an offshore liquified natural gas vessel. According to BusinessWeek, the massive craft "is docking in the port of Klaipeda and may replace all Russia’s annual 2.7 billion cubic meters of gas supplies." The project, three years in the making, carries a price tag of some $130 million. "Lithuania made a bold, yet timely, decision to begin an independent and fast construction of the LNG terminal," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite has remarked. "Lithuania now has a choice."
October 28:
Over Western objections, Russia has declared that it will recognize the results of the elections to be held by the pro-Russia rebels in Eastern Ukraine on November 2nd. The BBC reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the elections in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions "will go ahead as agreed, and we will of course recognise the results. [They] will be important to legitimize the authorities there."
Russia has sold nearly $10 billion worth of weapons and military equipment in 2014, a top defense official has said. The Moscow Times cites Anatoly Punchuk, deputy director of Russia's Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation, as saying that Russia’s global arms trade remains strong this year, with $9.8 billion worth of hardware sold to overseas clients. That figure, however, falls short of the total for 2013, when $15.7 billion worth was sold.
October 29:
The growth of the Islamic State in the Middle East is causing jitters in Moscow, reports Radio Free Europe. Dozens of men suspected to be collaborators with the terrorist group were arrested in Moscow on October 28th. The arrests came just a day after Russia's Prosecutor-General's Office publicly announced that many pro-IS accounts on a popular Russian social networking site had been shut down.
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