Putin speaks to Iran leader about Ukraine, Tehran's nuclear program

   
   

This as the United States and Russia will find it formidably difficult to make progress on Ukraine at talks in London today, British Foreign Minister William Hague said .
   
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are meeting in a last-ditch diplomatic effort to defuse tension between Moscow and the West as a referendum in Crimea, a Russian-majority region of Ukraine, looks set to proceed on Sunday.
   
"The fact that so far Russia hasn't taken any actual action to de-escalate tensions makes this a formidably difficult task today," Hague said.

EU:
 
The European Union has drawn up a list of 120-130 names of senior Russian officials who could be subjected to travel bans and asset freezes as part of EU sanctions, European officials told Reuters.
   
The list, which runs to five pages, was drawn up by diplomats who have experience in Russia and was supplied to EU officials in Brussels, who will discuss the names and whittle the list down ahead of a foreign ministers' meeting on Monday.
   
One EU official who has a copy of the list said it contained the names of generals and other people from the top echelons of Russia's military and political establishment.
   
EU member states are discussing whether to start by sanctioning as many people as possible from the list in a preventitive way, or else take a more cautious approach and add names from the list to the sanctions in several steps.

 
REUTERS