The Hague: President Barack Obama and top economic powers of the G8 have indefinitely cut Moscow out of the major international coalition on Monday. The group also cancelled an upcoming economic summit in Sochi, seeking to deepen Moscow’s isolation over its intervention in the Ukraine crisis.
After emergency talks called by Obama, it was announced that the G8 summit in June would be replaced by a G7 meeting in Brussels, without Russian involvement. The G7 also threatened tougher sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea.
The meeting in the Hague came as Ukraine ordered its outnumbered troops to withdraw from Crimea as yet another of its bases was stormed.
“We remain ready to intensify actions including coordinated sectoral sanctions that will have an increasingly significant impact on the Russian economy, if Russia continues to escalate this situation,” the G7 leaders said in a statement. The G7 “came together because of shared beliefs and shared responsibilities. Russia’s actions in recent weeks are not consistent with them. Under these circumstances, we will not participate in the planned Sochi summit”.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defiantly dismissed such a move as “no great tragedy” after separate talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Ukraine’s interim Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya – the highest-level contacts between the two neighbours since the crisis erupted.
“If our Western partners think that this format (the G8) has outlived itself, then so be it,” Lavrov told reporters. “We are not trying to hold on to this format, and we see no great tragedy if it does not meet,” he said, insisting Crimea has “a right to self-determination”.
A top NATO commander had warned that the Western military alliance was carefully watching massive Russian troop formations that could theoretically make a push across the vast ex-Soviet country at any point.
(With AFP inputs)