Russia Federation has declared its total support for Ukraine's breakaway movement in Crimea.
Moscow parliament is welcoming a delegation from the autonomous republic to Moscow and backing its vote to secede from Ukraine.
Putin's government says that despite deep differences with the West on the crisis, it hopes common ground will be found to avoid a new Cold War.
The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, Valentina Matvienko, on Friday assured Vladimir Konstantinov, Crimean parliament's speaker, that the region would be welcomed as "an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation if a referendum on March 16 was in favour of the move".
Crimean region's speaker met top politicians in Moscow before joining a rally in Red Square, which was attended by an estimated 65,000 people, many of whom waved Russian flags and chanted "Crimea is Russia!''
Matvienko's statement came after Arseny Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister, said his country was ready for talks with Russia, but on the condition that the Kremlin withdraw troops from Crimea and agree to stop supporting "separatists and terrorists".
"We have declared our readiness to hold talks with the Russian government," Yatseniuk said, listing a number of conditions, including withdrawing troops and "halting support for the separatists and terrorists in Crimea".
But there seemed to be little hope of those conditions being met. Russia's Foreign Ministry on Friday accused the EU, one of Yatsenyuk's primary backers, of taking an "extremely unconstructive position" by threatening sanctions.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin also said that he had many differences of opinion on Crimea with US Barack Obama after a phone call with his US counterpart.
Kiev faced further pressure after the Russian gas company, Gazprom, said it was considering cutting supplies to Ukraine after it failed to pay its January bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment