European Union leaders will consider repercussions for Russia at an emergency meeting today on the Ukraine crisis, after Russia's foreign minister fended off U.S. persuasion over the Crimean peninsula.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron will participate in today's EU meeting in Brussels, a day after the 28-nation bloc offered 1.6 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in emergency aid to help the new Ukrainian government avert a default.
Western nations including the U.S. are threatening Russia with sanctions over its military intervention in Crimea while pursuing diplomacy in an effort to defuse the crisis. Russia has accused the West of supporting a coup against Ukraine's former president and rejected EU proposals to broker a settlement.
"We cannot and will not allow the integrity of the sovereignty of the country of Ukraine to be violated and for those violations to go unanswered," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday after meetings in Paris with his counterparts from Russia, the U.K. and Ukraine.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov refused to attend a meeting yesterday with his Ukrainian counterpart in Paris that was urged by Kerry. Lavrov and Kerry met in the French capital in their first face-to-face encounter since Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych fled his country during a popular uprising last month.
"We are all concerned at what is happening there," Lavrov told reporters after a meeting last night at the French Foreign Ministry with Kerry and European counterparts. "The discussions will continue, and that's it."
Rebuffing Kerry's efforts to persuade him to speak with acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia, Lavrov said to reporters, "Who is it? I didn't see anyone."
While Kerry later said that he had "zero expectation" that Lavrov and Deshchytsia would meet yesterday, the Ukrainian envoy stayed in Paris longer than planned in hopes of such a meeting.
Without elaborating, Kerry said his talks with Lavrov had yielded "something concrete to take back" and discuss with President Barack Obama. The top U.S. diplomat travels to Rome today, as does Lavrov, for meetings on Libya.
