From the French news agency AFP:
The Swedish Navy stepped up its hunt Monday for a suspected foreign submarine in its waters with fingers pointing at Moscow in a throwback to the Cold War.
Swedish soldiers and sailors were scouring the sea southeast of the capital, Stockholm, in the biggest operation of its kind for years, while the public was warned for the first time to keep a distance and airspace restrictions were enforced.
The mystery around the alleged incursion thickened Monday, with Russia and the Netherlands denying that the vessel was theirs as tensions in Baltic rise over the crisis in Ukraine.
"There's an increase in military exercises from both the Russian and the NATO side," Prime Minister Stefan Loefven said, speaking at a press conference in Helsinki.
In one of two airspace violations in September, two Russian SU-24 fighter-bombers allegedly entered Swedish airspace in what Foreign Minister Carl Bildt at the time called "the most serious aerial incursion by the Russians" in almost a decade.
The Baltic Sea, an area of immense strategic importance, saw intense naval maneuvering throughout the Cold War years, with the Soviet Navy paying particular attention to neutral Sweden's long, rugged coastline.
Speculation mounted Monday over the whereabouts of the elusive vessel as the armed forces extended the search area southwards to open sea about 70 kilometres southeast of Stockholm.
As the search expanded, the military warned the public for the first time to keep a distance of at least 10 kilometers from the operation -- while stopping all non-essential air transport in the area.
With concern growing about the possibility of an unravelling of the European security order in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis, events in Sweden racked up tensions around the Baltic.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said on Twitter that he was following events in the Swedish territorial waters closely.
"[It] may become a game changer of the security in the whole Baltic Sea region," he tweeted on Sunday.
The arrival of the shockwave at the end of this video from Donetsk gives some indication of how powerful today's explosions were:
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Monday, October 20. Check back here in the morning for more continuing coverage.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
The European Union has called on Russia to implement its commitments under the Minsk agreement to resolve the Ukraine crisis, underscoring the Kremlin’s “responsibility” in the process.
The EU said in an October 20 declaration following a meeting of its foreign ministers that it expects "full engagement and swift implementation of all other commitments under the Minsk documents," calling for "the withdrawal of illegal armed groups, military equipment, fighters and mercenaries, as well as for the securing of the Ukrainian-Russian border."
The declaration came on the same day as a massive explosion near a munitions plant in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Pro-Russian rebels said Ukrainian forces struck the factory with a rocket. The Ukrainian military denied involvement.
From Human Rights Watch:
Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city in early October 2014, Human Rights Watch said. The use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes.
During a week-long investigation in eastern Ukraine, Human Rights Watch documented widespread use of cluster munitions in fighting between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in more than a dozen urban and rural locations.
While it was not possible to conclusively determine responsibility for many of the attacks, the evidence points to Ukrainian government forces’ responsibility for several cluster munition attacks on Donetsk.
An employee of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was killed on October 2 in an attack on Donetsk that included use of cluster munition rockets.
Read the full report here.