Main news this morning.
Last-ditch negotiations aimed at addressing Russia's concerns about a free trade agreement between the European Union and Ukraine ended without result December 21.
And then there's this:
Ukrainian news media reported December 21 that the country's national security service has banned the leader of the U.S. rock band Limp Bizkit from entering the country for five years.
The Ukrainian security service told Interfax and the online publication Apostrof December 21 that it had banned Fred Durst, the founder of the group and its lead singer, from entering Ukraine for five years starting in November, "in the interests of guaranteeing the security of our state."
Durst in October had told TASS and Interfax that he would be happy to have a Russian passport and a "pretty little house" in Crimea, the Black Sea region annexed by Russia in 2014. His wife, Kseniya Beryazina, was born in Crimea.
He also expressed an interest in performing in Donetsk, a city held by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has previously banned French actor Gerard Depardieu and American actor Steven Seagal for expressing support for the Russian government and its policies in Ukraine.
U.S. expands sanctions list for Russians, Ukrainians:
The United States is adding nearly three dozen people and companies to its sanctions list for activity directly or indirectly connected to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
The list, released on December 22 by the U.S. Treasury Department, includes several top officials in the self-declared "people’s republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, regions of eastern Ukraine now largely under separatist control.
It also includes several companies connected to Russian businessmen with close ties to President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. The men include oil trader Gennady Timchenko and billionaire industrialists Arkady and Boris Rotenberg.
All were previously sanctioned under the first round announced by President Barack Obama in 2014, after Russia annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March.
Several top former Ukrainian officials were also included, such as Vitaliy Zakharchenko. The Treasury Department said that as interior minister he gave the order for police to fire on protesters during the Euromaidan protests in 2014.