Putin must understand there is a choice to be made: Obama

The Hague: With no sign of Russia abandoning the Crimean Peninsula, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday said, he’s concerned that Moscow will move deeper into Ukraine and warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that that would be a bad choice. [caption id=“attachment_1450855” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.[/caption] Obama stood fast on his insistence that Crimea remains a part of Ukraine, even as the fledgling Ukrainian government in Kiev ordered its troops to pull back from the disputed territory. “We’re not recognizing what is happening in Crimea,” Obama said at his first news conference since Russia moved to annex Crimea after a referendum 10 days ago. Obama rejected “the notion that a referendum sloppily organized over the course of two weeks” would “somehow be a valid process.” “We also are concerned about further encroachment by Russia into Ukraine,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Obama noted Western sanctions and said that Putin “just has to understand there is a choice to be made here.” Obama was pursuing efforts to pressure Russia out of its aggressive pose as world leaders met for an international Nuclear Security Summit. But to the east, the Russian annexation of Crimea was beginning to take root and Moscow shrugged off Obama’s drive to leave Putin in the cold. The US and some of its closest allies cut Russia out indefinitely from a major coalition of leading industrial nations and canceled a summer summit Russia was to host in its Olympic village of Sochi. Obama also sought to win backing from other foreign leaders in hopes of ostracizing or even shaming Putin into reversing his acquisition of Crimea and backing away from any designs he might have on other Eastern Europe territory. In a strongly worded joint statement, the United States, France, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan denounced a referendum in Crimea to secede from Ukraine and Russia’s ensuing annexation. In so doing, the seven leaders also effectively excluded Russia from what had been a two-decade-old coalition known as the Group of Eight. “This clear violation of international law is a serious challenge to the rule of law around the world and should be a concern for all nations,” the declaration said. Still, today’s international gestures in Amsterdam and in The Hague got only a dismissive reaction from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Associated Press