Obama and Merkel consult on Ukraine
US president Barack Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel have agreed that international monitors must be sent immediately to southern and eastern Ukraine.
The leaders yesterday discussed Russia’s annexation of part of Ukraine, and agreed to stay in touch over the next few days.
They condemned the move by Russian president Vladimir Putin formally to annex Crimea following an overwhelming weekend vote by residents of the peninsula in favour of joining Russia.
The US and other Western nations refuse to recognise a vote they consider illegal.
The White House says Mr Obama and Mrs Merkel condemned Mr Putin’s move and agreed to continue to underscore to the Russian president that a diplomatic solution remains possible.
The leaders are expected to hold further talks in the coming days, including at a meeting of leading industrial nations next week in the Hague.
Mr Putin redrew Russia’s borders by declaring the Crimean Peninsula part of the motherland.
It provoked a surge of emotion among Russians who lament the loss of empire and denunciations from Western leaders who called Mr Putin a threat to the world.
In an ominous sign, a Ukrainian serviceman and a member of a local self-defence brigade were killed by gunfire in Crimea just hours after Mr Putin’s speech, the first fatalities stemming from the Russian takeover.
While Mr Putin’s action was hailed by jubilant crowds in Moscow and cities across Russia, Ukraine’s new government called the Russian president a threat to the “civilised world and international security”.
The US threatened tougher sanctions against Moscow, with Vice President Joe Biden, meeting anxious European leaders in Poland, denouncing what he called “nothing more than a land grab”.
He said: “The world has seen through Russia’s actions and has rejected the flawed logic.”
In an emotional 40-minute speech televised live from the Kremlin’s St George hall, Mr Putin said the time had come to correct a historical injustice and stand up to Western pressure by incorporating Crimea.
“In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia,” he declared.
He dismissed Western criticism of Sunday’s Crimean referendum as a manifestation of the West’s double standards.
“They tell us that we are violating the norms of international law. First of all, it’s good that they at least remember that international law exists,” Mr Putin said, pointing at what he called the US trampling of international norms in wars in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
“Our Western partners led by the United States prefer to proceed not from international law, but the law of might in their practical policies,” he said.
Russia's foreign ministry later denounced the decision of the president of the European Council to cancel a Moscow visit as a refusal to ``hear the truth''
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Herman van Rompuy was to meet with Russian officials today but his visit has been cancelled.
The foreign ministry claimed in a statement on that Mr van Rompuy “was not allowed” to come to Russia “by his own people”. The statement said Moscow had promptly reacted to his request to visit Russia and said it was cancelled at the last moment because Europe “didn’t want to hear the truth”.
