Europe, US split over tackling Ukraine

Munich, February 7

Germany’s Angela Merkel warned on Saturday that sending arms to help Ukraine fight pro-Russian separatists would not solve the crisis there, drawing a sharp rebuke from a leading US senator who accused Berlin of turning its back on an ally in distress.

The heated exchange at a security conference in Munich pointed to the fragility of the transatlantic consensus on how to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over a deepening conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 5,000.

Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March last year and evidence that it is supporting separatist forces in the east of the country, which the Kremlin denies, have driven Moscow’s relations with the West to a post-Cold War low.

A recent rebel offensive has triggered a flurry of shuttle diplomacy, with Merkel and French President Francois Hollande jetting to Moscow on Friday to try to convince Putin to do a peace deal.

But European officials say the Russian leader may have little incentive to negotiate now, preferring to sit back and watch the separatists make territorial gains in Ukraine that have made a mockery of a prior ceasefire agreement clinched last September in Minsk, Belarus.

Ukraine’s military said on Saturday that pro-Russian separatists had stepped up shelling of government forces and appeared to be amassing forces for new offensives on the key railway town of Debaltseve and the coastal city of Mariupol.

The German leader conceded in Munich, after returning home from Moscow in the dead of night, that it was uncertain whether a Franco-German peace plan presented to Kiev and Moscow this week would succeed but added it was "worth trying".

"I believe we owe this, above all, to the people of Ukraine affected by the conflict," she told the 51st Munich Security Conference yesterday, a day after she and French President Francois Hollande presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow a new peace plan to end the fighting that has claimed over 5,000 lives so far.           "It is uncertain whether it will lead to success, but from my point of view and that of the French president it is definitely worth trying," she said of the latest initiative.       

However, she flatly rejected the idea that sending weapons to Kiev, an idea being considered by US President Barack Obama, would help resolve the conflict.

Speaking after Merkel, US Senator Lyndsey Graham, a Republican hawk, praised the chancellor for her engagement in the crisis but said it was time for her to wake up to the reality of what he called Moscow’s aggressions.

“At the end of the day, to our European friends, this is not working. You can go to Moscow until you turn blue in the face. Stand up to what is clearly a lie and a danger,” Graham said.

He accused Merkel of turning her back on a struggling democracy by rejecting down Kiev’s request for arms. “That is exactly what you are doing,” he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, also in Munich, said there were “good grounds for optimism” that the talks between Merkel, Putin and Hollande could yield a deal.

Putin says leaders to meet if sides move closer to agreement

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday he planned to meet the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine in Minsk on Wednesday if the sides moved closer to an agreement on implementing an unravelling 2014 peace deal for east Ukraine.

“Conversation with colleagues from Kiev, Berlin and Paris has just ended. We have agreed to try to organise a meeting of this same format in Minsk,” Putin said during a meeting with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi.

“We will aim (to meet on) Wednesday if by then we have managed to agree our positions, which we have been discussing very intensively in recent days,” Putin added. — Reuters/PTI