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President Barack Obama is building pressure on Russia's Vladimir Putin to back down on Ukraine, where the war has lately taken a surprising turn against the Russian-backed separatists. At the same time, NATO's chief says that Russia is still actively trying to destabilize its neighbor.
Obama is teaming up with France's Francois Hollande. They're "pressing for a meeting 'as quickly as possible' to negotiate a bilateral ceasefire in Ukraine," The Telegraph reported yesterday. "Hollande's office said in a statement that the two leaders spoke by phone on Monday and called on … Putin to press separatists to accept dialogue with Ukrainian authorities."
Whether or not Obama is having any impact on the situation, the war for eastern Ukraine does appear to be de-escalating on some fronts. One of the separatists' top commanders last week predicted that his "best fighters will be bled dry … crushed, and destroyed" within a month. Indeed, the Kiev government has made unexpected gains, this weekend driving the pro-Russian militias out of their stronghold in the city of Sloviansk.
Still, it's anticipated that there will very soon be a battle in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk where the separatists have regrouped. And, as the Wall Street Journal notes, "some 3.5 million Ukrainian citizens still remain under the control of well-armed insurgents holding [these] major urban centers."
Putin has been quiet about the situation, and Russian state media has tempered some of its anti-Ukrainian propaganda, leading some to believe the Kremlin leader is ready to resolve the fight.
However, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who spoke with Obama yesterday and is pushing for NATO's European members to expand their military defense capabilities, warns, "Whenever the international community puts more pressure on Russia, they take some tactical steps that will defuse the international response, then after a while, they continue covert activities to destabilize the situation." He believes it's "pure tactics" on Putin's part to avoid further sanctions.
For more Reason coverage of Ukraine, click here.
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