Obama Urges Putin to Back Down or Face New Sanctions
Source: Bloomberg
By Julianna Goldman, Mike Dorning and Daria Marchak Mar 25, 2014 12:14 PM ET
President Barack Obama urged Russia to de-escalate the crisis over Ukraine or face the consequences of more sanctions if it encroaches further into the east of the country after its annexation of Crimea.
President Vladimir Putin “has to understand that there’s a choice to be made here,” Obama told a news conference after a 53-nation nuclear-security summit in The Hague today, saying there’s “another path open” to the Russian leader. “It is now up to Russia to act responsibly and show itself once again willing to abide by international rules and international norms.”
Obama spoke a day after he and his fellow Group of Seven leaders said they won’t attend a planned Group of Eight summit in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, the venue for the Winter Olympics, and will instead hold their own meeting in June in Brussels.
Russia has consolidated control over Crimea and is maintaining forces along the border with Ukraine, in what Obama said “appears to be an effort of intimidation,” in the most serious confrontation with the U.S. and its allies since the Soviet Union collapsed. The International Monetary Fund is set to make an announcement tomorrow after talks about a bailout loan for Ukraine, Finance Minister Oleksandr Shlapak said.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/obama-urges-putin-to-back-down-in-ukraine-or-face-more-sanctions.html
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I know your from the UK...but in the states your supposed to trust the MSM and just take em for their word. They are never wrong about anything and would never lie to you like that propaganda outfit RT! That pesky RT that kept saying there were no WMD's in Iraq. Lying Russian communist red scaring evilempire horseback riding bare chested LGBT hating imperialist soviet swamp dwelling Russia rats who can't even hold a decent olympics! 
By Pepe Escobar
But here, in a People's Daily editorial, is what the leadership is really thinking. And the focus is clearly on the dangers of regime change, the "West's inability to understand the lessons of history", and "the final battlefield of the Cold War."
...
While the Western dogs bark
Russia and China are strategic partners - at the G-20, at the BRICS club of emerging powers and at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Their number one objective, in these and other forums, is the emergence of a multipolar world; no bullying by the American Empire of Bases, a more balanced international financial system, no more petrodollar eminence, a basket of currencies, essentially a "win-win" approach to global economic development.
A multipolar world also implies, by definition, NATO out of Eurasia - which is from Washington's point of view the number one reason to interfere in Ukraine. In Eurasian terms, it's as if - being booted out of Afghanistan by a bunch of peasants with Kalashnikovs - NATO was pivoting back via Ukraine.
While Russia and China are key strategic partners in the energy sphere - Pipelineistan and beyond - they do overlap in their race to do deals across Central Asia. Beijing is building not only one but two New Silk Roads - across Southeast Asia and across Central Asia, involving pipelines, railways and fiber optic networks, and reaching as far as Istanbul, the getaway to Europe. Yet as far as Russia-China competition for markets go, all across Eurasia, it's more under a "win-win" umbrella than a zero-sum game.
On Ukraine ("the last battlefield in the Cold War"
and specifically Crimea, the (unspoken) official position by Beijing is absolute neutrality (re: the UN vote). Yet the real deal is support to Moscow. But this could never be out in the open, because Beijing is not interested in antagonizing the West, unless heavily provoked (the pivoting becoming hardcore encirclement, for instance). Never forget; since Deng Xiaoping ("keep a low profile" this is, and will continue to be, about China's "peaceful rise". Meanwhile, the Western dogs bark, and the Sino-Russian caravan passes.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-02-200314.html
for asking the question.
"Obama told a news conference after a 53-nation nuclear-security summit in The Hague today, saying there’s “another path open” to the Russian leader. “It is now up to Russia to act responsibly and show itself once again willing to abide by international rules and international norms.”
Good for President Obama and "The West".. and oh yeah, fuck Putin.
