Mosque vandalized in Crimea:
By the Crimean Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Unknown attackers have broken the windows of a mosque in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia last year.
The Spiritual Directorate of Crimea's Muslims said on November 16 that the attackers threw dozens of bricks at the mosque's windows in the village of Zavet-Leninsky.
The incident took place over the weekend.
Local Imam Rustem Akhmetshayev filed an official complaint with the local law enforcement authorities.
In September, unknown individuals vandalized posters depicting the Grand Mosque being constructed in Crimea's capital, Simferopol.
The majority of Crimea's Muslims are Crimean Tatars. Many of them have openly protested Crimea's annexation by Russia in March 2014.
Ukraine to return artillery to eastern front if situation escalates:
Ukraine's military says it will be "forced to return artillery and mortars" to its eastern front line if fighting in the country's east escalates further.
Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko made the comments on November 16 as fighting between government forces and Russian-backed separatists intensified after weeks of relative calm.
Ukraine says six of its soldiers have been killed around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk over the weekend despite a September cease-fire agreement.
"I have given orders to open fire in response as soon as our troops' lives come under threat," President Petro Poroshenko warned on November 15.
Meanwhile, separatists in Donetsk said Kyiv breached the truce dozens of time over the past week.
More than 7,900 people have been killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. (AFP, Reuters)
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has denied information that surfaced in the media today about 15 Ukrainian servicemen who allegedly were killed on November 7 in Donbas.
“The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces absolutely refutes this information, because it is untrue and is distributed to discredit the forces of the [Anti-Terrorist Operation],” reads the statement.
The ministry emphasized that the situation in Donbas on November 7 was relatively calm. One Ukrainian soldier was wounded on that day.
The alleged 15 casualties was first made public today on the morning show of Ukrainian Hromadske radio by Hennadiy Druzenko, president of the 1st Volunteer mobile hospital named after Mykola Pyrohov. Many Ukrainian media outlets reprinted the information.
Crimean news aggregator Obyektivny Krym published an alleged photo of a cactus, more than a century old, defaced by Russian tourists.
A cactus growing in the Nikitsky Botanical garden now bears scratches in Russian that read “Moscow” and “Obama is a shmuck.”
Deputy general director of the garden, Andrei Pashtetsky, confirmed the information to Russian news website Moslenta.
“Tourists arrived and, so to speak, immortalized themselves. This won’t come off the cacti,” he said.
Members of the Opposition bloc, largely made up of members of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, won mayoral elections in at least two Ukrainian cities -- both in eastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
According to official results, in Kryvyy Rih, Yuriy Vilkul saved his mayoral seat with 50.21 percent of voteds. His opponent, a representative of the Samopomich party, Yuriy Myloboh, received 49.79 percent -- only 752 votes less.
Myloboh has already claimed that the election results are falsified and says he is preparing a lawsuit to nullify them.
(Vilkul’s son Oleksandr, also a member of the Opposition bloc, lost a mayoral seat to Ukrop party member Boris Filatov in the regional center, Dnipropetrovsk, according to preliminary results.)
In Pavlohrad, Opposition bloc member Anatoliy Vershyna received 59.68 percent of votes, while his opponent from Ukrop party, Yevhen Terekhov, got 40.31 percent. Terekhov has already acknowledged that he lost the elections.