The first western attempts to get Moscow to back down over its seizure of Crimea failed on Wednesday evening, putting pressure on the EU to resort to punitive action against the Kremlin at an emergency summit on Thursday.
Negotiations in Paris between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, broke up without agreement on Wednesday. The Americans and the Europeans hoped to persuade Moscow to open a dialogue with the new government in Kiev and also to withdraw its forces in Crimea to their bases and allow in international monitors.
But while Lavrov accused the Americans of tabling unacceptable ultimatums, Kerry said there were "a number of ideas " up for discussion. Both men are expected to resume negotiations in Rome on Thursday after consulting their respective presidents, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.
"Things have moved in a good direction," said Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister.
Lavrov said western countries were proposing "steps that do not help create an atmosphere of dialogue. John Kerry agreed that such atmosphere needed to be created. It's very hard to make honest agreements that will help the Ukrainian people stabilise the situation in an atmosphere of threats and ultimatums."
Kerry insisted he had not come to the French capital expecting to find an instant answer to the crisis in the Crimea, but was encouraged by signals from the Russians after meeting his Moscow counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Kerry also met the Ukrainian foreign minister Andrij Deshchytsia.
"I believe I have something to take back to President Obama, and I believe Foreign Secretary Lavrov has something to take back to President Putin. All parties agree it's important to resolve this issue through dialogue," Kerry said.
It had been a day of frantic diplomacy in Paris, where Kerry met his Russian counterpart in an attempt to find a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis. "We will not allow the integrity, the sovereignty, of Ukraine to be violated - or for that violation to go unchallenged," Kerry told journalists after the meeting. "Russia made a choice. We have clearly stated it is the wrong choice to move troops into the Crimea. Ukrainian territorial integrity must be restored and maintained." Kerry added that efforts would continue to allow a "de-escalation" of the situation.
The meeting between Kerry and Lavrov was the first direct US-Russian contact since the Ukrainian crisis acquired alarming dimensions at the weekend with the fall of President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia's military occupation of Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Analysts and diplomats in Brussels had been expecting the Kremlin to make symbolic concessions in order to weaken the case for sanctions against Russia by Europe and America, but those failed to materialise. That put further pressure on Thursday's emergency EU summit, with the Europeans almost obliged to impose punitive measures on Russia. Early on Thursday the EU said it had targeted Yanukovych and 17 other members of his former Ukrainian hierarchy with an assets freeze.
In Washington, Congress was fine-tuning legislation that would provide Obama with a "sanctions toolbox", including visa bans and asset freezes, similar to those used against Iran. The US is expected to push ahead with sanctions, which at their most extreme would include measures to restrict trade, irrespective of the decisions taken in Europe.
The Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe announced that it was sending a team of 35 observers to Ukraine. Initial signs of concessions from the Russians were scant.
Lavrov said it was not up to Russia to invite the observers to Crimea as that was not Russian territory. He also said Moscow could not order the forces controlling Crimea back to bases or barracks since they were not under Russian control, but were local "self-defence" units opposed to the new government in Kiev and safeguarding their region. Diplomats in Brussels said this amounted to opposition to the western proposals.
In Crimea, a UN special envoy had to abandon his mission after being stopped by armed men and besieged inside a cafe by a hostile crowd shouting "Russia! Russia!" The envoy, the Dutch diplomat Robert Serry, agreed to leave Crimea to end the standoff.
© APUnidentified men in military fatigues outside a cafe in Simferopol, Ukraine who appear to be stopping UN envoy Robert Serry from leaving.
The transatlantic gulf opening up over how to respond to Putin appeared to be widening. One senior official from a G7 country told the Guardian of growing unease over the US push for economic sanctions against Russia. "This isn't time for economic sanctions," the official said. "There is no clock ticking and the we should be careful not to antagonise the other side."
The senior official said Berlin, rather than Washington, should assume the lead in talks with Russia. "I don't think the US should necessarily be taking the lead on behalf of G7 countries."
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has spoken to Putin six times in the past week and the Germans are keen to engage rather than isolate the Russians.
In Washington, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, said a bipartisan push was under way to pass legislation that would "strengthen the president's hand". He said it would be similar to how the US Congress and White House had dealt with Iran. "We gave the administration what I'll call a toolbox of sanctions [against Tehran] that they had the ability to impose as they saw fit," Boehner said.
Comparisons to the situation with Iran are likely to unnerve the White House, which has been embroiled in a series of bruising battles with hawks in Congress, who have spent months trying to push through sanctions legislation that further squeeze Tehran, a move the Obama administration believes would scupper nuclear negotiations.
But Obama, who last week insisted "there will be costs" for Putin if he intervened in Ukraine, a threat he has repeated several times since, is under pressure to follow through with action.
Officials in Brussels said there was little sign of willingness from the Russians to pursue a political settlement of the crisis, but they did not rule out a late, last-minute proposal from the Kremlin that would deflect the pressure for sanctions and divide Europeans going into the summit.
"The situation in Crimea needs to be handled through political dialogue in the framework of the Ukrainian constitution and respecting the rights of all Ukrainian citizens and communities," said Jose Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission. "I expect no one will oppose a deployment of international observers to Crimea."
Earlier in Paris, Lavrov boycotted a meeting with Kerry, Hague, and the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Deshchytsia. Kerry said that "regrettably" one member - Russia - had failed to appear for a meeting of the so-called Budapest agreement group, which guaranteed Ukraine's borders after it renounced nuclear weapons in the 1990s.
Lavrov repeated the Kremlin's assertion that the 16,000 troops that have seized Crimea were not Russian forces. "If you mean the self-defence units created by the inhabitants of Crimea, we give them no orders, they take no orders from us," he said. "As for the military personnel of the [Russian] Black Sea fleet, they are in their deployment sites."
European officials and diplomats admit that the sanctions being discussed on Thursday were symbolic rather than substantive. The measures include freezing talks on making it easier for Russians to travel to Europe and on a new overall agreement regulating relations between Russia and the EU. Russian and European officials admit that both sets of talks are unofficially frozen anyway. Nonetheless, Moscow is threatening to retaliate.
Hague said the summit would need to show that there were "costs and consequences for Russia's actions against Ukraine". But the impact was more likely to be long-term rather than immediate.
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