Agencies :
Diplomatic efforts to ease tensions in Ukraine are gathering pace as US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov prepare to hold crucial talks in Paris.
The US wants independent observers in the flashpoint region of Crimea and direct talks between Kiev and Moscow.
Russia is likely to call for greater representation for Ukraine’s Russian-speaking areas in the Kiev government.
Russia said on Wednesday it could not order “self-defense” forces in Crimea back to their bases ahead of the first face-to-face talks with the United States on easing tensions over Ukraine and averting the risk of war.
Russia and the West are facing the most serious confrontation since the end of the Cold War over influence in Ukraine, a major commodities exporter and strategic link between East and West.
Ukraine pulled out of a trade deal with the European Union under Russian pressure last year, leading to months of street protests in Kiev and the February 22 ouster of President Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian ally.
Russia has effectively occupied the Crimea region, further raising the tensions in the region and provoking sharp falls in financial markets on Monday although they have since stabilized. Speaking before meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris later in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated Moscow’s assertion – ridiculed by the West – that the troops that have seized control of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula are not under Russian command.
“If you mean the self-defense units created by the inhabitants of Crimea, we give them no orders, they take no orders from us,” Lavrov told a questioner at a joint news conference with his Spanish counterpart in Madrid. “As for the military personnel of the (Russian) Black Sea Fleet, they are in their deployment sites. Yes, additional vigilance measures were taken to safeguard the sites… We will do everything not to allow any bloodshed.”
Lavrov will also meet the German, British and French foreign ministers and France’s President Francois Hollande on the sidelines of a conference in Paris attended by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
NATO and Russia will hold parallel talks in Brussels amid concerns that a standoff between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Crimea could still spark violence, or that Moscow could also intervene in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.
The West is pushing for Russia to return troops to barracks, accept international monitors in Crimea and Ukraine and negotiate a solution to the crisis through a “contact group” probably under the auspices of a pan-European security body.
France said European Union leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday could decide on sanctions against Russia if there is no “de-escalation” by then. Other EU countries, including Germany, are more reticent about sanctions.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday defended Russia’s actions in Crimea, which used to be Russian territory, and said he would use force only as a last resort.
This eased market fears of a war over the former Soviet republic after sharp falls on Monday, although Russian shares and the ruble slipped again on Wednesday and Ukraine’s hryvnia dropped against the dollar. Russian forces remain in control of Crimea, where Interfax reported they seized control of two Ukrainian missile defense sites overnight, and Putin gave no sign of backing down.
“What he wants above all is a new empire, like the USSR but called Russia,” former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko told France’s Europe 1 radio.
In Washington, US President Barack Obama acknowledged that Russia had legitimate interests in Ukraine but said that did not give Putin the right to intervene militarily.
“President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations,” Obama said. “But I don’t think that’s fooling anybody.”
A senior administration official said Obama spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday and discussed a potential resolution to the crisis. The Russian-speaking German leader has good relations with the German-speaking Putin, and Berlin is Russia’s biggest economic partner.
The official said Obama, in his phone call with Putin last Saturday, had discussed what officials called an “off-ramp” to the crisis in which Russia would pull its forces in Crimea back to their bases and allow international monitors to ensure that the rights of ethnic Russians are protected.
