U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Russia Monday to meet Ukraine halfway in trying to implement an agreement to defuse the crisis in the former Soviet republic.
Kerry spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by telephone on Monday morning, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States on Thursday agreed on ways to ease tensions in the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
“The secretary urged Russia to take concrete steps to help implement the Geneva agreement, including publicly calling on separatists to vacate illegal buildings and checkpoints, accept amnesty and address their grievances politically,” Psaki said at a news briefing.
With pro-Moscow separatists showing no sign of surrendering government buildings they have seized in eastern Ukraine, Washington pegged a threat of new sanctions on Russia to how hard Moscow tries to make the Geneva agreement work.
“If progress is not made in coming days, we will impose further costs,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
The Geneva agreement calls for illegally occupied buildings to be vacated under the auspices of envoys from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Reuters informs.
