TODAY: Putin warns the White House against supplying arms to Kiev; NATO concerned about increased Russian air activity; ‘ceasefire’ period sees 957 fatalities. Kudrin decries ‘populist’ economic policies; VTB faces nosedive in profits.

With U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden due to land in Kiev today, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has warned Washington against any attempts to supply arms to Ukraine.  Some lawmakers have adopted a harsher tone, with Alexey Pushkov, the head of the Russian State Duma committee for international affairs proposing a ‘Nobel War Prize’ for President Barack Obama.  The UN’s human rights watchdog has found that nearly 1,000 people have been killed during the Ukraine ‘ceasefire’ agreed at the start of September.  NATO jets have had to scramble 400 times this year in response to the increase in Russian air activity around Europe, of a scale not seen since the Cold War.  A report by the European Leadership Network has described the incidents as ‘a highly disturbing picture of violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles’ and ‘narrowly avoided mid-air collisions’.  Following the first visit by a Russian defence minister to Pakistan since 1969, Russia and Pakistan have signed their debut military cooperation agreement.  President Putin has used his meeting with the Security Council to lambast ‘illegal, uncontrolled migration’, ‘colour revolutions’ and ‘extremism’, which he sees as ‘a geopolitical instrument to rearrange spheres of influence’.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has announced that North Korea is willing to resume stalled international talks on its nuclear program.