NATO Chief Says 'We Don't Want A New Cold War' With Russia
By RFE/RL
NATO does not want "a new Cold War" with Russia, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of a four-day parliamentary assembly of the alliance.
"We are concerned by...[Russia's] lack of transparency when it comes to military exercises," Stoltenberg said on October 9 in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
He mentioned the Zapad exercise that Russia held with Belarus in September, which brought thousands of troops close to NATO's eastern members and caused concerns about Moscow's intentions given its military interference in Ukraine.
At the same time, Stoltenberg said: "Russia is our neighbor.... We don't want to isolate Russia; we don't want a new Cold War."
He said the 29-member alliance has stepped up jet patrols over the Black Sea in "response to Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine."
Romanian and Bulgarian pilots have conducted air exercises in the Black Sea in recent months, designed to reassure NATO members after Russia's interference.
Russia occupied and seized control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and backs separatists in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine.
Top prosecutor claims FSB, ex-partner of victim's wife behind Kyiv slaying:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Ukraine's top prosecutor has claimed that the killing of a former Russian lawmaker who was shot dead in Kyiv in March was ordered by a former partner of the victim's wife, and suggested that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind it.
Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko's October 9 announcement was billed as a breakthrough in the probe into the killing of Denis Voronenkov, a former State Duma deputy who defected to Ukraine and became a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Voronenkov was gunned down in broad daylight in central Kyiv on March 23. The alleged gunman in the contract-style killing, Crimean-born Ukrainian national Pavlo Parshov, died in the hospital after being shot by Voronenkov's wounded bodyguard.
In the new statement, Lutsenko said Ukrainian investigators have discovered that the slaying was ordered by Vladimir Tyurin, a Russian he described as a "criminal kingpin...who is under FSB control."
Lutsenko asserted that Tyurin also had "personal reasons" to kill Voronenkov, who he said "used to be the common-law husband of Maria Maksakova, who later became Voronenkov's wife."
He said Ukraine would seek Tyurin's extradition from Russia.
Tyurin denies involvement and dismissed the claim as "nonsense," according to a former lawyer for the Russian.
Voronenkov's killing "is the doing of Ukrainian nationalists, who hoped that the Ukrainian authorities would then use it for a new accusation against Russia," the Interfax news agency quoted lawyer Sergei Belyak as saying.
Tyurin "has no connection to this crime," he said.
Maksakova, an opera singer who is also a former Russian lawmker, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Voronenko's killing was one of a series of politically charged shootings, car bomb blasts, and other attacks carried out in Kyiv in the past 15 months.
None of the cases has been solved and nobody has been convicted, but Ukrainiain authorities in many cases see the Russian security and intelligence services as the main suspects.
On the day of Voronenkov's killing, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called it "an act of state terrorism by Russia."
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine are extremely high due to Russia's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and its role in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.