BRUSSELS -- European Union leaders have agreed to prolong sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine.
Meeting in Brussels on June 20, the leaders extended the bloc's economic sanctions against Russia, which mainly target the country's energy and banking sectors, by six months.
They also agreed to renew sanctions for another year an investment ban on the Crimea region.
"Russia sanctions unanimously extended for another six months because of a lack of Minsk Agreements implementation," Preben Aamann, a spokesman for European Council President Donald Tusk, tweeted.
The EU, the United States, and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia over Moscow's seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and its support for the separatists holding parts of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in a conflict that has killed some 13,000 people since April 2014.
Cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords in September 2014 and February 2015 have failed to hold.
