Poroshenko to press EU leaders on Russia sanctions:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is to meet with top European Union leaders to press them to keep up sanctions against Russia.
Poroshenko's November 24 meeting with Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker comes amid worries in Kyiv that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will weaken Western resolve against Russia upon taking office in January.
The EU is set at its next summit next month to discuss a six-month renewal of sanctions that were imposed after a Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014.
But Trump has signaled a more conciliatory approach to the Kremlin, and even suggested he might accept Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
Internal political reforms demanded by Brussels in exchange for visa-free travel will also be on the agenda.
"I think the focus must be on the situation in [eastern Ukraine], on Russian aggression, on the extension of sanctions," Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told Ukrainian television.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed insurgents has claimed more than 9,600 lives and forced hundreds of thousands to flee. (AFP, UNIAN)