LATEST -- EU agrees to put new sanctions on Ukrainian separatists:
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on November 17 agreed on the need to impose more sanctions on pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The EU foreign ministers asked for proposals to place more Ukrainian separatists on the sanctions list by the end of this month.
The move is intended to show the EU's rejection of the November 2 elections organized by pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine.
The sanctions are expected to include freezing assets and imposing travel bans.
The ministers did not take any further actions against Russia, which is seen as providing substantial aid to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin was in Brussels on a visit and called for the EU to send a "clear message to Moscow that further destabilization in Ukraine will trigger further steps by the EU." (AFP and Reuters)
This ends our live-blogging for November 17. Be sure to check back tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is due later today in Kyiv for talks on resolving the crisis in eastern Ukraine. He'll hold talks with President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Russian agency TASS reports that Steinmeier is scheduled to fly on to Moscow later in the day to meet with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for talks expected to focus on Ukraine.
The planned meetings come one day after EU governments moved to put more Ukrainian separatists under asset freezes and travel bans. But EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, took no action to step up economic sanctions on Russia despite voicing alarm about an upsurge of violence in eastern Ukraine.
EU foreign ministers asked officials to put forward names of an unspecified number of pro-Russian separatists to be added to the EU's sanctions list by the end of the month.