Obama to Russia: Heed warning or pay the price

President Barack Obama listens as British Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during a news conference Thursday at the G-7 summit in Brussels.

President Barack Obama listens as British Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during a news conference Thursday at the G-7 summit in Brussels.

Friday, June 6, 2014

BRUSSELS -- President Barack Obama said Thursday that Russia had about a month to reverse its intervention in Ukraine and rein in the pro-Russia separatist uprising there, or else it would face broader international sanctions aimed at whole sectors of the Russian economy.

Emerging from a summit meeting in Brussels with the leaders of six other major democracies, Obama said President Vladimir Putin of Russia should recognize and negotiate directly with the newly elected president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko.

Obama also called on Putin to stop the flow of fighters and arms across the Russia-Ukraine border and to use Russia's influence to press the separatists to disarm and relinquish the government buildings they have seized in eastern Ukraine.

"Russia continues to have a responsibility to convince them to end their violence, lay down their weapons and enter into a dialogue with the Ukrainian government," Obama said at a news conference alongside Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, after a meeting of leaders of the Group of Seven nations. "On the other hand, if Russia's provocations continue, it's clear from our discussions here that the G-7 nations are ready to impose additional costs on Russia."

For the first time, Obama laid out a time frame, saying the process could not drag out.

"We will have a chance to see what Mr. Putin does over the next two, three, four weeks," Obama said, "and if he remains on the current course, then we've already indicated what kinds of actions that we're prepared to take."

Cameron echoed the message. "The status quo is unacceptable," he said. "The continuing destabilization of eastern Ukraine must stop." After he listed actions Russia must take, he said, "If these things don't happen, then sectoral sanctions must follow."

So far, the United States and the European Union have imposed only limited sanctions, aimed at individual Russians and a handful of companies associated with them, in retaliation for the Russian annexation of Crimea and the violence in eastern Ukraine. The next stage of sanctions mentioned by Cameron would be broader, cutting off dealings with Russian businesses and institutions in industries such as finance, energy or minerals.

European leaders have resisted such an escalation at least in part because their countries have much deeper economic ties to Russia than the United States does, and their companies have a lot to lose financially. Germany receives about one-third of its natural gas from Russia, Britain has extensive banking ties there, and France does a thriving arms business with the country.

Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany threatened to impose broader sanctions if Russia disrupted the May 25 election in Ukraine that chose Poroshenko. Pro-Russia separatists worked to stop the voting in the east, but elsewhere the election went ahead, so the United States and European leaders did not follow through on the threat.

It remained unclear what the West would do if Russia left matters as they were, neither escalating the situation nor reining in the separatists.

France has said it intends to go ahead with a $1.6 billion sale of warships to Russia. Obama took issue with that decision again Thursday, before leaving Brussels for Paris to dine with President Francois Hollande of France.

The group's meeting in Brussels was the first in two decades to exclude Russia, which has been suspended from what had been the Group of Eight. Even so, Hollande, Cameron and Merkel all scheduled individual meetings with Putin.

Cameron defended meeting separately with Putin. "I think it's right to have this dialogue, particularly if you have a clear message and a clear point to make," he said. "I think there's a world of difference between having a dialogue with President Putin and excluding someone" from the meeting.

Obama skated lightly over the disparate decisions.

"Do I expect unanimity among the 28 EU members?" he asked. "I've now been president 5 1/2 years, and I've learned a thing or two about the European Union." With 28 members, there would be disagreements, he said, and "we take that for granted."

And Obama said he was sensitive to why some European leaders might be reluctant to cut back ties with Russia. "If in fact we do have to move to sectoral sanctions, it's important to take individual countries' sensitivities in mind and make sure that everybody is bearing their fair share," he said.

But he added in regard to further sanctions: "My hope is, is that we don't have to exercise them, because Mr. Putin's made some better decisions."

Obama and Cameron insisted that the allies remained united in the face of Russia's actions. "I've been heartened by the steadfastness of Europe thus far," Obama said.

From Brussels, Obama and other leaders jetted to France ahead of events marking today's 70th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy invasion that paved the way for the Allied victory in World War II.

The Russian president was among dozens of leaders invited to gather on the beaches of Normandy to reflect on a high point of East-West cooperation. His invitation stood even after he annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, a move the West has deemed a violation of international law.

Obama has no plans for a formal meeting with Putin, although the president has acknowledged he will almost certainly speak with Putin at a private luncheon for the leaders today. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who have met frequently during the crisis, huddled in the French capital Thursday evening.

Meetings like the G-7's trace their history to 1975, when leaders of the major industrial democracies -- United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan -- inaugurated the Group of Six to discuss the pressing economic issues of the day.

Canada joined a year later, making it the Group of Seven, and the European Commission has attended the meetings as an observer nearly since the start. But it is a club with no actual organization, just a rotation of host countries, and over time the agenda broadened well beyond economics to cover all sorts of global issues.

Boris Yeltsin began attending the summit meetings as Russia's president in 1993, seeking help for his country as it emerged from the Soviet Union and the Cold War. By 1994, he was being described as a "participant," and in 1997, when President Bill Clinton was trying to anchor Russia in the international order, he included Yeltsin in nearly all of the group's meetings, held that year in Denver.

Russia was officially inducted as the eighth member in 1998. Its first turn to host a summit meeting was in 2006, when Putin invited his counterparts to a gleaming palace he had restored outside St. Petersburg.

More recently, leaders of countries such as China, Brazil and Mexico began attending as observers, to the point that at the 2009 summit meeting in Italy, the first one that Obama attended, 40 countries were represented, accounting for 90 percent of the world economy. The Italians spent $75 million to create an Olympic-style village for the meeting.

Obama has tried to shift emphasis away from the Group of Eight, on the theory that it would be better to focus on the Group of 20, which includes a broader range of countries. But instead of absorbing or replacing the Group of Eight meetings, the Group of 20 merely added another international meeting to the president's annual schedule.

The rupture over Ukraine transformed this year's G-7 meeting. The usual observers were absent, and the leaders were using existing facilities. The agenda, while ostensibly covering issues such as energy and the climate, focused primarily on Russia and Ukraine.

Information for this article was contributed by Peter Baker of The New York Times; by Kathleen Hennessey of the Tribune Washington Bureau; and by Julie Pace, Juergen Baetz, Raf Casert and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/06/2014