Analysts says Moscow unlikely to heed West's warnings over Ukraine

Washington: Analysts and former Obama administration officials said that Russia is unlikely to pull back its forces in the Crimean peninsula, forcing the United States and Europe into a more limited strategy of trying to prevent President Vladimir Putin from making advances elsewhere in the former Soviet republic. [caption id=“attachment_1420081” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] President Obama is faced with tough decisions as the crisis in Ukraine and relations with Russia continue to take unexpected turns. AP.[/caption] It’s an unsettling scenario for President Barack Obama, who is under pressure to show he has leverage over Putin in a deepening conflict between East and West. So far, the US has threatened Russia with economic sanctions, as well as a series of modest measures including canceling of trade talks and military exercises with Moscow, and suspending plans to attend an international summit in Russia. But those steps have done little to persuade the Russian leader to pull his forces back from Crimea. In his first news conference since the crisis began, Putin had said that Russia reserved the right to use all options to protect Russians in Ukraine as well Moscow’s interests in the region. Putin also denied that Russian armed forces had directly engaged in the bloodless seizure of Crimea, claiming that the uniformed troops without national insignia were “local self-defence forces”. AP with inputs from Reuters.