With war spreading through Ukraine, single mother Valentyna decided to fight -- that is, to save her son from conscription. And in this corruption-riddled country, a quiet word in the right ear was enough.

The going rate to bribe the Ukrainian draft board to remove a young man's name from the list is about $2,000 (1,580 euros), or more than seven times the average monthly salary, according to several sources familiar with the system.

The conflict in Ukraine has driven more than 824,000 people from their homes, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday, warning that it was having to scramble aid to offset the impact of winter.

At least 430,000 people had been displaced within Ukraine as of Thursday, UNHCR said, 170,000 more than at the start of September.

Russia's ruble slumped to a new all-time low on Friday as the economic fall-out from the Ukraine crisis and lower oil prices caused the finance minister to call for a "back-up" 2015-2017 budget.

For the first time it took more than 53 rubles to buy one euro, and the rate against the dollar topped 41.92 with speculation swirling that Standard and Poor's could cut its rating for Russia to a "speculative" level.

In the war-scarred city of Slavyansk in east Ukraine few people are looking to the future with hope as they gear up for a parliamentary poll this Sunday.

For more than two months the provincial town was the epicentre of fierce fighting between Ukrainian forces and Moscow-backed rebels until the insurgents surrendered it to government troops in July in the face of a fierce onslaught.

While much of Ukraine is abuzz with campaigning for Sunday's parliamentary poll Sunday, refugees who have fled fighting in the east for Russia say they want nothing to do with the vote.

"Ukrainian elections? What elections?" scoffed Pavel, 46, one of 300 Ukrainians holed up at a Russian holiday camp some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border near the town of Taganrog.

The last major poll published Wednesday ahead of Ukraine's parliamentary election showed President Petro Poroshenko's party seizing up to a third of seats but reliant on help from nationalist parties to form a ruling coalition.

The Kiev-based Foundation for Democratic Initiatives said just over 30 percent of respondents who had made up their minds and intended to vote in Sunday's ballot preferred the pro-Western Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

One civilian was killed and five injured in shelling in east Ukraine's rebel-controlled city of Donetsk over the past day, local authorities said Wednesday.

Heavy shelling hit the Kirov and Kalinin districts southwest and north of the city center on Tuesday and throughout the night, although Wednesday appeared calmer, Agence France Presse correspondents said.

EU-brokered crunch talks to resolve the bitter gas price dispute between Russia and Ukraine failed on Tuesday, as a new meeting was set for next week amid fears Moscow could halt crucial energy supplies to Europe this winter.

European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger however said "significant progress" was made after the talks broke up between the Ukrainian and Russian energy ministers, Yuri Prodan and Alexander Novak.

Ever since Oleksiy Baburin's Stalin statue in southeastern Ukraine was bombed, he has been hiding it behind heavy metal blinds. Now the Communist lawmaker says his entire party is under attack.

As Ukraine gears up to vote in a snap parliamentary election after a year of dramatic upheaval, the Communist Party is finding its power base has collapsed.

Ukraine's Western-backed leadership vowed on Tuesday to conduct a full inquiry into allegations the army used banned "cluster bombs" in its push against pro-Russian insurgents in the separatist east.

Human Rights Watch has published an investigation conducted jointly with The New York Times identifying 12 incidents in which the highly-imprecise munitions killed six people -- including a Swiss aid worker -- in and around the rebel-held city of Donetsk earlier this month.