This ends our live blogging for December 22. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
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.