Russia plays down impact of Western sanctions before talks with U.S

March 30, 2014 Black Truth News Community News, Politics, Recent Posts

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet in Paris at 1630 GMT seeking to hammer out the framework of a deal to reduce tensions over Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

They will aim to develop a proposal conceived by Kerry and Lavrov at earlier sessions, with Western leaders considering broader sanctions against Russia that would target vital sectors of its economy including its mainstay oil and gas industry.

Ideas on the table included a deployment of international monitors in Ukraine, the withdrawal of Russian forces from Crimea and the border zone around Ukraine, and the launch of direct talks between Moscow and the government in Kiev.

“Today, we expect Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov to continue the discussion they’ve been having in the interest of finding concrete ways to de-escalate the conflict,” a senior U.S. State Department official said.

Kerry and Lavrov hoped to build on a phone call on Friday between presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama, according to senior U.S. officials, to defuse the worst East-West confrontation since the Cold War ended two decades ago.

A spokeswoman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU strongly favored “meaningful dialogue” between Ukraine and its old Soviet-era master Russia.

“Russian officials have been stating that Moscow has no intentions beyond Crimea. We expect to see words translated into deeds, including with regard to the military build-up at the regions bordering Ukraine,” Ashton’s spokeswoman said.

The United States and EU have meted out two rounds of sanctions on Russia, including visa bans and asset freezes for some of Putin’s inner circle, to punish Moscow over its seizure of Crimea, a Russian-majority Black Sea peninsula, after mass protests ousted Kiev’s pro-Russian president in February.

“I don’t want to say that sanctions are ridiculous and that we couldn’t care less, these are not pleasant things,” Lavrov told Russia’s Channel One.

“We find little joy in that, but there are no painful sensations. We have lived through tougher times.”