Vladimir Putin has lost the plot over Ukraine, according to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
US reports said Merkel phoned Barack Obama on Sunday evening after speaking to the Russian president to press him to back down from his invasion of Ukraine and occupation of the Crimean peninsula.
“She was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. ‘In another world,’ she said,” the New York Times reported.
The vast gap between Putin’s and the west’s perceptions of what is taking place in Ukraine is adding to the pressure on the White House to take the lead in what US experts are calling the defining international crisis of Barack Obama’s two terms. Senior US administration officials concede that Putin has taken total control of Crimea.
EU foreign ministers gather in Brussels for an emergency meeting on Monday. Nato, also in Brussels, is expected to issue a damning statement on Russia. But the Europeans and the Americans already appear divided and there are also splits among European allies, encouraging the Kremlin to believe that the response from the west will be less than overwhelming.
While Washington is threatening to kick Russia out of the G8 group of leading world economies, Berlin is opposed to this move. The EU foreign ministers are unlikely to get very far in agreeing on economic sanctions against Russia, while John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has spoken of a punitive package aimed at Russia’s economic isolation.
Kerry is expected in Kiev on Monday where the foreign secretary, William Hague, described Ukraine as “certainly the biggest crisis in Europe in the 21st century”, Guardian informs.
