News from overnight:

-- Ukrainian state-owned PrivatBank on December 18 filed a $600 million lawsuit in Israel as part of its worldwide effort to recover assets it says the lender’s two previous majority shareholders had allegedly embezzled.

-- Ukraine’s national legislature, the Verkhovna Rada, on December 19 passed a law in its second and final reading that makes it a criminal offense for a member of parliament to vote for one or more lawmakers.

Good morning!

From our news desk:

Ukraine's Ex-Envoy To UN Appointed Ambassador To Washington

Ukraine's former two-term permanent representative to the UN, Volodymyr Yelchenko, has been named Kyiv’s new envoy to the United States.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued the relevant decree late on December 18.

Yelchenko, 60, is a seasoned diplomat with nearly four decades of experience.

He was Ukraine's permanent UN envoy in 1997-2000 and again from December 2015. He replaces Valeriy Chaliy in Washington whose tenure had expired.

He gave his last speech at the United Nations on December 18 -- when the General Assembly adopted an updated resolution on Russian-occupied Crimea that seeks to protect human rights on the Ukrainian peninsula.

"Crimea is an integral part of Ukraine," Yelnichenko reiterated in his address.

He also was the ambassador to Austria in 2005-2006, and to Russia between 2010 and 2015.

Then-President Viktor Yushchenko dismissed Yelchenko from his post in Vienna on December 28, 2006 for violating instructions when issuing visas to members of the political opposition in Turkmenistan.

When his predecessor, Chaliy, was the deputy head of the presidential secretariat in 2007, he described Yelchenko as one of Ukraine’s best diplomats.