Chat212 - Mail Summary...
- Ukraine’s acting president has said that he would not wage war over Crimea as the ex-Soviet state’s premier prepared to seek United States President help against Russia’s expansionist threat.
- The standoff has also seen U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry deliver a snub of immense diplomatic proportions by refusing a visit to Moscow that could have included a meeting with the Kremlin chief.
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TO ensure peaceful resolution, Ukraine’s acting president has said that he would not wage war over Crimea as the ex-Soviet state’s premier prepared to seek United States President, Barack Obama’s help against Russia’s expansionist threat.
The first meeting between Obama and Ukrainian Prime, Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk comes with the nation on the EU’s eastern border in danger of breaking apart when the predominantly ethnic Russian region holds a Moscow-backed referendum Sunday on switching over to Kremlin rule.
Ukraine’s acting, President Oleksandr Turchynov told AFP that his heavily outnumbered army would never try to seize back the Black Sea peninsula from Russian troops who made their land grab days after the February 22 ouster in Kiev of pro-Kremlin leader Viktor Yanukovych.
“We cannot launch a military operation in Crimea, as we would expose the eastern border and Ukraine would not be protected,” Turchynov said in an interview.
Turchynov also said Russian President Vladimir Putin had so far resisted intense international pressure and refused all contacts with Kiev aimed at resolving the worst breakdown in East-West relations since the Cold War.
“Unfortunately, for now Russia is rejecting a diplomatic solution to the conflict,” he said. “They are refusing all contact at foreign ministry and top government level.”
Russia’s first military involvement in a neighbouring country since its brief 2008 war with Georgia has sparked an explosive security crisis and exposed major rifts between Western allies over ways to deal with Putin’s undisguised efforts to rebuild vestiges of the Soviet state.
Washington has imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Russians held responsible for violating the territorial integrity of the culturally splintered nation of 46 million people.
But the European Union — its financial and energy sectors much more dependent on Russia than those of the United States — has only threatened tougher measures after taking the lighter step of suspending free travel and broad economic treaty talks.
The standoff has also seen U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry deliver a snub of immense diplomatic proportions by refusing a visit to Moscow that could have included a meeting with the Kremlin chief.
European Commission, President Jose Barroso said the Group of Seven most developed economies would later on Wednesday issue a joint “call on Russia to cease all efforts to annex Ukraine’s autonomous republic of Crimea.”
But the international community’s almost unanimous rejection of the referendum’s legitimacy has done little to slow Russia’s attempt to redraw Europe’s post-war borders by absorbing a region that was handed to Ukraine as a “gift” when it was still a Soviet republic in 1954.
Russia’s parliament is due on March 21 to consider legislation that would simplify the procedure under which Moscow can annex part of another country that has proclaimed independence — as Crimean lawmakers did Tuesday.
