Putin Stops Talks With White House
As
new U.S. sanctions against Russia loom, the Kremlin has shut down—at
least for now—intensive high level communications between top U.S. and
Russian officials.
The Daily Beast
Putin Stops Talks With White House
“Putin will not
talk to Obama under pressure,” said Igor Yurgens, Chairman of the
Institute for Contemporary Development, a prominent Moscow think tank,
and a close associate of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “It
does not mean forever.”
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Obama
and Putin last spoke over the phone on April 14, a call that the White
House said was initiated at Moscow’s request. Obama urged Putin in the
call to end Kremlin support for armed, pro-Russian activists creating
unrest in eastern Ukraine. Obama also warned that the U.S. would impose
more “costs” on Russia if Putin continued his current course. According
to the Kremlin’s readout of the call, Putin denied Russian interference
in eastern Ukraine and said “that such speculations are based on
inaccurate information.”
Obama and Putin have spoken to each other
about Ukraine regularly over the past weeks, including calls on March
28, March 16, and March 6. But that these calls are now on hold for the
indefinite future, due to their lack of progress and frustration on both
sides.READ MORE Putin’s Pervy Propaganda
On Friday, Kerry warned that new round of American financial assaults on Russia were on the way. “We are putting in more sanctions, they will probably come Monday at the latest,” said in a private meeting in Washington, according to an attendee. Russian businesses and individuals close to Putin would be on the sanctions list, he added.
Diplomatic sources close to the process confirmed that Putin is not interested in speaking with Obama again in the current environment. The two leaders might talk again in the future but neither side is reaching out for direct interaction, as they had been doing since the Ukraine crisis began. The failure of the agreement struck last week in Geneva between the contact group of the U.S., EU, Russia, and Ukraine has made further direct Washington-Moscow interactions moot.
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Other top U.S. officials are also now out of direct contact with their Russian interlocutors. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is also getting the cold shoulder from his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu. Pentagon officials have reached out to Russia on Mr. Hagel’s behalf within the past 24 hours but have not gotten any response, according to Pentagon Spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren.
That leaves the channel between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as the only semi-functioning high-level diplomatic channel between Washington and Moscow. But even that often-frosty relationship has further chilled as the two sides hurled insults and accusations this week.
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After speaking over the phone Monday and then again Tuesday about the now defunct Geneva agreement on Ukraine, Kerry and Lavrov are now conducting diplomacy through the press—and leveling harsh and undiplomatic charges against one another.
Kerry appeared at the State Department press room Thursday afternoon to declare publicly that Russia was not keeping its word.
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“For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction,” Kerry scolded. “Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity. “
Kerry also lashed out at Russia Today, the Kremlin-sponsored television network, which Kerry said spends all its time “to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine.”
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“Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk,” Kerry accused.
Lavrov publicly responded, “The U.S. is trying to pervert everything that is going on in Ukraine.”
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On Friday, Kerry summed up his recent interactions with his Russian counterpart” “I’ve had 6 conversations with Lavrov in the last few weeks. The last one was Kafka-esque. It was bizarre.”
U.S. and Western European officials, echoing Kerry, told The Daily Beast that new sanctions against Russia could come as early as Monday, following an EU meeting to endorse a list of 15 Russian individuals that will be targeted for new sanctions. The U.S. could also unveil new individuals for targeted sanctions on Monday, but while the U.S. list overlaps the EU list, the two lists are not identical.
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The
decision to move ahead with new sanctions, thereby pronouncing the
death of the Geneva agreement and the current diplomatic process with
Russia, was agreed on a Thursday night video conference call between
President Obama (from Tokyo), Prime Minister Cameron, Chancellor Merkel,
President Hollande and Prime Minister Renzi, several officials said.
“While
they continued to hold open the door to a diplomatic resolution of this
crisis, based on the Geneva agreement, the five leaders agreed that in
the light of Russia’s refusal to support the process, an extension of
the current targeted sanctions would need to be implemented, in
conjunction with other G7 leaders and with European partners,” a
spokesperson for Cameron’s office said.
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Those
targeted sanctions will still fall short of what many in Washington,
including leading Democrats, are calling on the Obama administration to
do. During a stop in Kiev Thursday, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl
Levin said that the U.S. “should make more robust use of the powers
established in Executive Order 13661, which authorizes sanctions against
the Russian financial, energy, metals, mining, engineering, and defense
sectors… and we should use this authority to sanction Russian banks…
and to take on Russia’s manipulation of energy prices and supplies,
which it uses to coerce not only Ukraine, but also many of its
neighbors.”
Obama said
Thursday there is a limit to the harm he wishes to see imposed on Putin.
Asked during his stop in South Korea if he would save Putin from
drowning, Obama said. “I absolutely would save Mr. Putin if he were
drowning. I’d like to think that if anybody is out there drowning I’m
going to save them.”
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