US President Barack Obama on Monday vowed Western unity in punishing Moscow for annexing Crimea, ahead of crisis talks that could see Russia excluded from the G8 club of rich nations.
“Europe and America are united in our support of the Ukrainian Government and the Ukrainian people, we’re united in imposing a cost on Russia for its actions so far,” Obama told journalists at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
Obama then headed to The Hague where he has called an emergency Group of Seven summit to discuss what steps to take in the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War. Russian troops have rapidly overrun the flashpoint Black Sea peninsula since the fall of a pro-Moscow Government in Kiev a month ago.
A senior official in the pro-Russian regional Government later said that all troops loyal to Ukraine had left their bases in Crimea. A top NATO commander had warned on Sunday that the Western military alliance was carefully watching massive Russian troop formations on the eastern border of Ukraine that could theoretically make a push across the vast ex-Soviet country at any point.
Russia’s takeover of Crimea, which it views as a reunification, has forced Western leaders to rethink their relationship with Moscow after a post-Cold War period in which they sought to usher Russia into the broader international community.
With Russia massing what NATO has described as a “very sizeable” force on its border with Ukraine, there are fears that Vladimir Putin is hungry for more Ukrainian territory. The growing crisis will dominate the summit in The Hague originally set up to discuss nuclear security. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei lavrov is to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the Summit.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei lavrov is to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) for what may be their most tense talks to date.