Ukraine crisis: The elusive Moscow blacklist

Campaign posers for Sunday's independance referendum in Simferopol's Lenin square

Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers is shaping up as one for the history books. Just as Crimean officials are scheduled to be finishing their count of the region’s independence referendum, ministers will gather in Brussels to finalise a list of Crimean and Russian officials to be targeted with travel bans and asset freezes, the most significant step yet taken by any of the western allies against the Russian incursion.

But first, diplomats must decide who exactly is on that list.

The process started in EU embassies in Moscow, who pulled together a master list that was forwarded to diplomats in Brussels. According to one diplomat involved in the discussions, the list is to be narrowed to a “small but politically significant” group of people who are “infringing Ukraine’s territorial integrity”. The diplomat put the final number “in the tens or scores”. So perhaps 20 to 40 names.