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Geneva talks try to bring Ukraine back from the brink

PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 17.04.2014 13:15
As President Putin denounces Ukraine's decision to send armed forces into the east of the country, officials from Ukraine, EU, Russia and US meet in Geneva to try and defuse the crisis.

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A TV screen is seen in a street cafe during the live broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual call-in live broadcast, in St. Petersburg, Russia, 17 April: photo - EPA/ANATOLY MALTSEV

EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya are in Switzerland in an attempt to find a political solution as the situation worsened still further in east of Ukraine.

Separatists attacked a base of the Ukrainian national guard in the eastern city of Mariupol over night, with the Ukraine government saying three attackers were killed in the shooting that followed.

"They came here around 8:15 p.m [Wednesday] demanding that we surrender our weapons and join the people. There were some women with them, but then they left," police major Oleksandr Kolesnichenko, deputy commander of the base, is quoted by Reuters as saying.

‘Abyss’

Vladimir Putin said in a special Russian TV address on Thursday that the Ukraine government was "dragging the country into an abyss" after the start by Ukraine troops of what the interim government in Kiev calls an “anti-terrorist operation” to clear pro-Russian groups from their occupation of government buildings in 10 eastern Ukrainian cities.

NATO has said that Russia is fuelling unrest in the east, an allegation Putin called “rubbish”.

“It's all nonsense. There are no kinds of Russian units in eastern Ukraine. No special forces, no instructors. They are all local citizens,” he said.

Russia’s president admitted, however, that Russian forces had been active in Crimea in order to support local defence forces.

"We had to take unavoidable steps so that events did not develop as they are currently developing in southeast Ukraine. Of course our troops stood behind Crimea's self-defence forces,” he said.

EU ‘must take Ukraine crisis seriously’

Meanwhile, a senior politician in the ruling Civic Platform has bemoaned the EU’s lack of coordinated action in Ukraine, which, to the 28-nation bloc, is not currently embroiled in a dangerous crisis but merely “a conflict”.

Grzegorz Schetyna, speaker of the lower house and head of Poland’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Polish Radio Thursday morning that the EU, collectively, “does not want to deal with the crisis on our eastern border”.

The EU has followed the US in slapping travel bans and asset freezes on senior Russian officials connected with President Putin but has been reticent to move to the so-called “third stage” of action against Russia, which would involve tougher economic sanctions.

Poland - which has been pushing for firmer measures against Moscow as pro-Russian separatists occupy government buildings in at least 10 cities in eastern Ukraine, with Russia’s backing, says NATO – needs to speak out for tougher measures, “not as a loan voice but as part of the Weimar Triangle countries (Poland, Germany and France],” Grzegorz Schetyna said.

Schetyna predicted that President Putin would continue to destabilize the situation in Ukraine “until elections on 27 May” when Ukrainians go to the polls to elect a new president after the fall of the Viktor Janukovich regime in February.

Pro-Russian
Pro-Russian protesters take photos of Ukrainian soldiers sitting on their armored vehicle in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, 16 April 2014.Pro-Russian protestors blocked a column of Ukrainian armored vehicles enroute to Slaviansk and did not allow them to pass. Pro-Russian insurgents, who are demanding broader autonomy from Kiev and closer ties to Russia, continued occupying government, police and other administrative buildings in eastern cities, in defiance of an ultimatum by the Ukrainian government to lay down their weapons: photo - EPA/KONSTANTIN IVANOV

Diplomatic sources have told the Reuters news agency that the EU can be split into roughly three different camps on sanctions against Russia.

Those pushing for tougher sanctions include Poland, Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Those urging caution are Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Malta.

An undecided group led by Germany include the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia.

"The crisis is different in the south of Europe and in the north of Europe," Czech Defence Minister Martin Stropnicky told reporters earlier this week in Luxembourg.

"Of course we as the Czech Republic are more close to the position of Poland for example or the Baltic states, or Sweden, if I may add, Great Britain, so we are rather urging the union to be firm." (pg)

tags: Ukraine
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