The entry ban targets US policymakers, business people, journalists and academics   Russia has put 227 US citizens on its entry blacklist, including State Department spokesman Matthew Miller and other high-ranking officials, the Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday.

Kiev is unable to engage in peace talks with Moscow because the US and its allies forbid it from doing so, Russian spy chief Sergey Naryshkin has said. “The overseas masters of the Ukrainian regime won’t allow getting [the Ukrainian] dossier off the ground,” Naryshkin told Tass on Tuesday.

Three suspected mercenaries from Britain and Morocco, who joined the Ukrainian military and were later captured by the forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), could be facing the death penalty there, the republic’s General Prosecutor’s Office said on Friday.