Here's a new item from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
RIA News Agency, Tycoons Added To Ukraine Sanctions List
Ukraine has banned Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti, according to a recently expanded list of prominent Russians and entities subjected to Ukrainian sanctions.
The updated list published on May 24 contains 1,748 individuals and 756 legal entities -- up from 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities one year ago.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on May 14 expanding the sanctions to mirror those of the United States, but the document posted three days later on his website did not carry any names.
According to the new sanctions list by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, the RIA Novosti office and the Interselekt company, which carried out all the agency's economic activities in Kyiv, are banned for three years.
Sanctions include the blocking of assets, limiting or stopping the provision of telecommunications services, and blocking access to their website
The new sanctions were "an indicator of the impotence" of the current Ukrainian "regime," said Dmitry Kiselev, the director of the public media conglomerate Rossia Segodnya, the parent company of RIA Novosti.
On May 17, a Ukrainian court ordered the head of RIA Novosti's branch in Ukraine held for two months on charges of high treason in a case that drew angry criticism from Moscow and expressions of concern from media watchdogs.
Kirill Vyshinsky was detained in Kyiv two days earlier by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and his apartment and the news outlet's office were searched.
The SBU accused RIA Novosti Ukraine of participating in a "hybrid information war" waged by Russia against Ukraine.
SBU officials said Vyshinsky, who has dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship, received financial support from Russia via other media companies registered in Ukraine in order to disguise links between RIA Novosti Ukraine and Rossia Segodnya.
Ukraine's expanded sanctions list also includes aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, Aleksei Miller, CEO of Russia's state-owned gas giant Gazprom, tycoon Viktor Vekselberg, the main owner of the Renova holding group, as well as Igor Rotenberg -- the son of billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, a close friend of President Vladimir Putin -- gold magnate Suleiman Kerimov, and oil tycoon Vladimir Bogdanov.
Restrictions on Deripaska could affect the operation of his Mykolaiv Alumina plant in southern Ukraine -- one of the largest assets of his Rusal aluminum firm.
Kyiv first slapped sanctions on Russian firms and entities after Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
More than 10,300 people have been killed in the fighting between the separatists and Ukrainian government troops since it broke out in April 2014.
With reporting by AFP and Reuters
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
Investigators: Buk Missile From Russian Antiaircraft Brigade Downed MH17
By RFE/RL
A Dutch-led international criminal investigation has concluded that the Buk missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 came from Russia's 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade.
The Joint Investigative Team (JIT), comprising authorities from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, made the announcement at a press conference on May 24 in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
MH17 was shot down over the conflict zone in Ukraine's Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.
Bellingcat, a British-based team of open-source researchers investigating the crash, had already identified the 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade as being the likely source of the missile that investigators say brought down the jet.
Russia denies interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs, despite compelling evidence that Moscow has provided military, economic, and political support to separatists fighting against Kyiv. Russia and the separatists deny shooting down MH17 and have offered several other theories to explain the incident, all of which have been rejected by investigators.
WATCH -- The Downing Of MH17: What Happened?
The JIT determined in 2016 that MH17 was shot down from separatist-held territory in the Donetsk region by a Buk antiaircraft system provided by the Russian military. The JIT report says the Buk entered Ukraine near Krasnodon and was spirited back into Russia immediately after the airliner was shot down.
On May 25, Bellingcat is to hold a press conference in The Hague for the launch of a new report on the probe.
The Bellingcat investigation, conducted jointly with the independent Russian website The Insider, said in December it had identified a senior Russian general as a figure of interest in the downing of the airliner.
The Bellingcat investigative group -- which uses sophisticated digital techniques to analyze open-source audio and visual data -- alleged that a man identified on intercepted communications as Delfin (Dolphin) is retired Russian Colonel General Nikolai Tkachyov, who is currently serving as the chief inspector of Russia's Central Military District.
Tkachyov denied that he was Delfin or that he was in eastern Ukraine in 2014.