As the deadly violence in Ukraine ramps up, so does the international scramble to find a solution.
President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will discuss the crisis Monday in Washington. Some U.S. officials are considering sending lethal aid to the Ukrainian military, but Merkel says that’s a bad idea.
“The progress that Ukraine needs cannot be achieved with more weapons,” Merkel said. “I have grave doubts about the validity of this point.”
Merkel said she believes that if the West sends weapons to Ukraine, Russia could further step up its involvement in the conflict, possibly introducing its air force into the fight.
But U.S. Sen. John McCain, who supports arming Ukraine, said it’s a “harsh reality” that Russia’s military is supporting pro-Russia separatist rebels in Ukraine.
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not want a diplomatic solution, he wants to dominate Ukraine as well as Russia’s other neighbors.”
The crisis comes nearly a year after Ukrainian officials and the U.S. government accused Russia of flooding Crimea with troops ahead of its widely disputed annexation of the territory in March 2014.
Similar allegations of Russian military involvement have been made about the current conflict in eastern Ukraine, with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk recently saying his forces are fighting not with local militants, but “with the Russian regular army.”
Russian officials have denied the claims, saying the fighting is between what it calls a “fascist” government in Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists. Last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the Russian government would “continue actively facilitating a peaceful settlement” to the conflict.
Sketchy peace talks
The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France spoke by phone over the weekend and planned a face-to-face meeting Wednesday in Belarus.
But even that gathering — which could be a significant meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko — isn’t set in stone.
“We are planning for Wednesday if we succeed in settling the various points that we have discussed so intensively over these last days,” Putin said Sunday.
The big challenge facing Putin, Poroshenko, Merkel and French President Francois Hollande is whether they can reach a peace agreement that will stick.
A peace agreement was already signed in September. It called for a drawback of heavy weapons, self-rule in the eastern regions and a buffer zone to be set up along the Russia-Ukraine border.
But the agreement quickly disintegrated, and the violence continued.
The new plan envisions a much broader demilitarized zone to run along the current front lines.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Council at the European Union tweeted that the organization had agreed on additional sanctions and restrictions on Russian-backed separatists and supporters.
But Susanne Kiefer said implementation of the sanctions have been delayed until February 16 to allow for diplomatic efforts to go forward.
All the while, the crisis in Ukraine — which actually stemmed from a trade agreement — has killed more than 5,000 people, including many civilians.
At least 224 civilians were killed in the final three weeks of January alone, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights said.
How we got to this point
Western leaders and Ukraine accuse Russia of supporting pro-Russian separatists battling Ukrainian forces in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. They have also accused Russia of sending troops to the border to fight.
Russia has denied the allegations.
But some Western leaders continue to slam Putin. On Sunday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Putin was acting like a “mid-20th century tyrant.”
Hammond told Sky News that Russia’s behavior was “outrageous and outdated” and warned that Putin will “pay the price for what he is doing in Ukraine.”
Explosion rattles facility in Donetsk
On Sunday, a strong explosion rocked what the website for the city of Donetsk referred to as a chemical goods plant.
On Monday, however, a European diplomat told CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh that the facility was likely an arms depot or factory in a separatist-held area of Donetsk.
Buildings in the area were damaged in the Sunday blast, including homes, but no casualties have been reported.
Eduard Basurin, deputy defense minister of the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic, accused Ukraine of carrying out an attack that caused the explosion.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry wouldn’t say if the blast was the result of an attack by its military.