US warns Russia it faces isolation, sanctions in coming days
Tuesday, 18 March 2014 00:43
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Reuters: The White House warned President Vladimir Putin on Sunday that Moscow would face sanctions in coming days and international isolation that will hurt Russia’s economy, as Washington fumed over a referendum in Ukraine’s Crimea region that it was powerless to stop.
“We are putting as much pressure on the Russians as we can to do the right thing,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said as voters in Crimea, under the control of Russian forces, decided whether to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.
With Sunday’s referendum widely expected to favor union with Russia for a region that has a Russian-speaking majority, President Barack Obama’s Republican critics accused the administration of showing weakness in the Ukraine crisis and said now was the time for U.S. resolve to prevent Putin from formally annexing Crimea. Obama appears intent on showing he was not bluffing in his threat that Russia would pay a price for its seizure of Crimea, but his options are limited.
Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a telephone call on Sunday that the United States would not accept the results of Crimea’s referendum on seceding from Ukraine and it continued to urge a political resolution on Moscow, a State Department official said.
Pfeiffer said the administration was working with European partners to step up pressure on Russia in the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War. Crimea’s pro-Russian regional government went ahead with the referendum despite U.S. and European threats against Moscow.
