As the clock ticks down to Sunday’s referendum in Crimea, US Secretary of State John Kerry has threatened Russia with “a very serious series of steps” even while making a last ditch-bid diplomatic bid to resolve the tangle by meeting his Russian counterpart Sergey lavrov in london.
The meeting, however, was not regarded as promising, given the rigid line taken by the two sides on how to deal with the overall Ukraine issue.
Heading into the meeting, Kerry said he wanted to dig into “possibilities that we may be able to find about how to move forward together to resolve some of the differences”.
lavrov termed it “a difficult situation we are in”, commenting: “Many events have happened and a lot of time has been lost, so now we have to think what can be done.”
The United States has been demanding that Russia de-escalate the situation by holding talks with the Ukraine government, pulling back to the barracks its troops in Crimea and allowing international observers to go into the issue of preservation of the rights of all ethnic groups.
On the eve of the meeting, Kerry told a Congressional hearing in Washington that he would put forth to his Russian counterpart “a series of options that are appropriate in order to try to respect the people of Ukraine, international law, and the interests of all concerned”.
At the same time, he made it clear that if Russia did not halt the referendum, the US and the European Union would set in motion a series of steps. Pressing ahead with the referendum will, in Kerry’s view, “close any available space for diplomacy”.
The Vladimir Putin regime, however, countered the American threats by saying that Moscow with respond its own matching measures if the US and European Union slapped any sanctions. Russia’s Deputy Economy Minister Alexei likhachev was quoted as saying in Moscow: “We are ready for any eventuality.”
While the US and EU assert that the Crimea referendum violates Ukraine’s constitution and international law, Russia said it would respect the outcome of the vote.