MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin on Wednesday renounced the
right to send troops into Ukraine and voiced support for a peace plan,
but the West said Russia must do much more to stop the fighting in
eastern Ukraine if it wants to avoid a new, more crippling round of
sanctions.
A cease-fire, already fragile, is set to expire Friday,
the same day that Ukraine signs a pivotal economic agreement with the
European Union and the day that the EU and U.S. may consider further
punitive measures against Russia.
After months of upheaval, this
much is clear: The West appears to accept that it can do nothing about
Russia’s annexation of Crimea, while Moscow seems resigned to Ukraine
signing the sweeping trade pact that will bind the country more closely
to the EU.
It was the former Ukrainian president’s abrupt decision
late last year to back out of the EU deal under pressure from Russia
that triggered the current crisis.
But much uncertainty still
surrounds the future of eastern Ukraine, where government troops are
battling armed Moscow-backed separatists. The cease-fire has been
repeatedly interrupted by fighting since it went into force last Friday.
At
Putin’s request, the Russian parliament rescinded a resolution that had
empowered him to intervene militarily in Ukraine. Putin said his
request was intended to support the peace process.
U.S. and European governments welcomed the step but said it was not enough.
"Now
we believe it’s critical for President Putin to prove by his actions,
not just his words, that he is indeed fully committed to peace," U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry said at a meeting of diplomats from NATO
nations in Brussels.
The same message was delivered by the German chancellor and the NATO chief.
Behind
the scenes, meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine spoke
with Putin for more than an hour in a conference call.
The four
agreed that a mechanism needs to be set up to oversee the cease-fire,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said. A statement issued by
French President Francois Hollande said he and Merkel encouraged Putin
to work with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to put such a
mechanism in place.
The Kremlin said that Putin once again called
for extending the cease-fire and sitting down for talks. Putin has
argued that Ukraine’s demand that the rebels lay down their weapons
within a week was unrealistic because they fear reprisals.
The
cease-fire is set to expire Friday morning. On Tuesday, however,
Poroshenko warned that he may end the truce ahead of time after the
rebels used a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down a Ukrainian military
helicopter, killing nine servicemen.
In eastern Ukraine, residents
said fighting raged as recently as Wednesday morning around the city of
Slovyansk, where at least one woman died when a mortar bomb tore
through the roof of her house. AP reporters who visited Slovyansk saw
fresh damage from the fighting, and witnesses said that rebels fired on
government positions just outside the city, drawing retaliatory fire
that damaged some residential buildings.
Kerry listed the specific
steps that the West expects Putin to take to show his commitment to
peace: stop the flow of weapons and fighters from Russia to Ukraine,
publicly call on the separatists to lay down their arms, withdraw
Russian forces from the border and help secure the release of observers
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who have
been held in eastern Ukraine for weeks.
"Until Russia fully makes
that kind of commitment to the peace process and to the stability of
Ukraine, the United States and Europe are compelled to continue to
prepare greater costs, including tough economic sanctions, with the hope
that they will not have to be used," Kerry said.
Merkel told
lawmakers that the EU will do everything possible to find a diplomatic
resolution, but "if nothing else helps, sanctions could return to the
daily agenda."
Two previous rounds of U.S. and EU sanctions
imposed asset freezes and travel bans on members of Putin’s inner circle
over Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The next round, which would affect
entire sectors of the Russian economy, could be far more crippling.
NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after a meeting of NATO
foreign ministers that they endorsed a package of measures to bolster
Ukraine’s military.
Alexei Arbatov, the head of the Center for
International Security at the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote in the
daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the Ukrainian crisis can be resolved only
through compromise, or else "the country will be torn into pieces with
grave political and social consequences for Europe and the entire
world."
Putin has called on Ukraine to adopt constitutional
amendments and other legal changes that would protect the rights of
Russian-speakers in the east. Poroshenko promised on Wednesday to
propose amendments offering broader powers to the country’s regions.
___
Vladimir
Isachenkov in Moscow, John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels, David Rising in
Berlin and Greg Keller in Paris contributed to this report.