Leaders of the worlds seven major industrialized countries are to hold talks in the Netherlands to discuss the Ukraine crisis following the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea joining Russia. During the meeting on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in The Hague on Monday, US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan are expected to look into ways of finding a balance between putting pressure on Moscow and protecting their own economies amid doubts that sanctions can constrain Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the West might want to move slowly. Russia has an economy that is highly focused on oil and gas. It is not diversified ... If it came to putting in place sanctions, that would hurt Russia considerably. So in my view we should do everything to prevent that, he commented. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in an article on Saturday that Britain and its allies should consider imposing lasting restrictions on arms sales and military cooperation with Russia. The G8 leaders have suspended preparations for the upcoming meeting of the group in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi initially planned for June. On March 21, Putin signed into law the documents officially making Crimea part of the Russian territory. Putin said the move was carried out based on the international law. Putin also signed legislation creating two new Russian administrative districts -- Crimea and the port city of Sevastopol. Earlier, Russia’s lower house of parliament and the Federation Council upper house had overwhelmingly put their stamps at the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation. Crimea declared independence from Ukraine on March 17 and formally applied to become part of Russia following a referendum a day earlier, in which 96.8 percent of the participants voted in favor of the move. The voter turnout in the referendum stood at 83.1 percent.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 09:08:00 +0000
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