EU canceled June’s meeting with Russia

The European Union canceled a planned for June summit with Russia, in response to the annexation of Crimea in the Russian Federation and will add new names to the list of Russian officials who will be penalized, but won’t impose economic sanctions on Moscow.

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“There is a suspension of political relations (...) the EU-Russia meeting cannot take place under these conditions” the French President Francois Hollande said emerging from a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. “If Russia agrees to start a dialogue, if there is de-escalation of the situation, then we won’t move towards new sanctions. If the illegal claims, number of soldiers and threats increase, then there will be further sanctions” he warned.

Yesterday morning the German Chancellor Angela Merkel had stated that the EU will add new names to the list of Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian officials who imposed a visa ban and froze their assets. The 28 EU leaders will discuss the addition of 12 people who are most intimate friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the list of 21 that was announced Monday, according to a European source. The list of 21 is “not enough” because it doesn’t cover low-level officials. The time has come to target intimate friends of President Putin, the president of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė added.

The 28 who will meet again today in Brussels want a credible response to the annexation of Crimea to Russia. To express their support in Kiev they are expected to sign a agreement with the transitional Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseni Yatseniouk about the political part of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine, which expelled president Viktor Yanukovych had refused to sign. “We must do everything to build a strong and democratic Ukraine (...) to offer a real political support” was said by the British Prime Minister David Cameron, who added: “What Russia did is unacceptable and EU countries need to speak with a common voice”.

“We must be extremely careful (...) not to succumb to emotion, because the EU also has to keep weapons in the event of further escalation and to protect the interests of the Europeans, the Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo warned. The 28 could assign to the European Commission the task to prepare for possible economic sanctions; however “a clear, political, economic and military analysis” of the impact of these measures is required, according to Di Rupo. To avoid an escalation “that would be dangerous for the region, but also for us”, the EU should “help a dialogue” between Moscow and Kiev, he noted, while asking the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, Herman van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, to “go to Kiev and Moscow”.

The Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt noted that the country has 400 companies that have a presence in Russia “and are worried about what will happen”. “The dialogue should be a priority (…) we must not close the doors of negotiation” his counterpart from Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, added.