A news item now from our Brussels correspondent Rikard Jozwiak:
EU Officially Extends Ukraine-Related Sanctions Against Russia For Six Months
BRUSSELS -- The European Union has formally prolonged economic sanctions against Russia for six months over Moscow's aggressive actions in Ukraine.
The European Council said in a December 21 statement that it formalized a decision made by EU leaders last week to extend the existing restrictions against Moscow until July 2018.
The EU measures, which mainly target the Russian banking and energy sectors, were first imposed in the summer of 2014 and have been extended every six months since then.
The December 14 agreement in Brussels followed a debate among EU leaders in which French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed for an extension.
Sources who were not authorized to speak on the record told RFE/RL that some countries including Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia voiced reservations about the sanctions but agreed that EU unity on the matter was more important.
Speaking after the December 14 summit in Brussels, European Council President Donald Tusk said that all member states were "totally united when it comes the role of sanctions against Russia."
"It was the first time that we decided on this without any disputes and arguments," Tusk added.
Merkel said the leaders had "a very intense discussion on the question of prolonging sanctions" and all agreed that more progress was needed carrying out the peace process outlined in the Minsk agreements.
The EU and the United States imposed sanctions in response to Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region in March 2014 and its support for separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 10,300 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Several cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed to resolve the conflict -- have failed to hold.
There does seem to have been quite a lot of activity this month:
Former PrivatBank owner says London court's asset freeze only "temporary":
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Tycoon Ihor Kolomoyskiy says that a London court's freezing of assets held worldwide by him and his partner, Hennadiy Boholyubov, in connection with trouble at Ukraine's largest lender, PrivatBank, is only "temporary."
The government nationalized PrivatBank, founded by billionaire former regional governor Kolomoyskiy, a year ago in an effort to avoid a financial collapse in the former Soviet republic. The bank had been dogged by rumors of bad debts caused by risky lending practices.
PrivatBank has since filed several lawsuits against the former owners and on December 19 the English High Court granted a global freezing order on some $2.5 billion worth of assets held by Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov, including six companies they are believed to own or control.
"This is a temporary freezing order for the time of the trial," Kolomoyskiy was quoted as saying on December 21 by the TSN.ua news service.
At issue are a series of transactions at PrivatBank that it alleges amounted to the misappropriation of funds.
Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov deny the allegations and have accused the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the country's central bank, of misrepresenting the state of PrivatBank's finances.
Kolomoyskiy has turned to the courts to challenge the nationalization and has tried to prevent Ukrainian authorities from cooperating with external companies to investigate the reasons for PrivatBank's insolvency.
"PrivatBank is confident that the English court will determine its claims fairly and objectively and that it will succeed in recovering funds that have been misappropriated from it," the bank said in a statement on December 20 in reaction to the court announcement.
The NBU, which has been administering the troubled institution, said in a statement it supported PrivatBank in its quest to recover funds as it looks to restructure and return to profitability.
The NBU believes that this lawsuit is "good news for taxpayers in Ukraine and the Ukrainian economy," the central bank said in the statement.
Kolomoyskiy, one of Ukraine's richest men, served briefly as head of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and was credited with preventing the spread of separatist sentiment in the region following Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea and backing of armed separatists further east in the Donbas.
But President Petro Poroshenko dismissed him in 2015, accusing him of setting up a private militia and trying to take over a state-affiliated oil company.
The region Kolomoyskiy governed, which is now called Dnipro Oblast, borders Donesk Oblast -- one of two regions held in part by Russia-backed separatists whose conflict with Kyiv's forces has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014 and continues despite a European-brokered agreement to end the fighting and resolve the conflict. (w/Reuters, TSN)
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (click to expand):
