Putin hints he may let 'fact-finding' team evaluate Ukraine crisis

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http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-ukraine-international-observers-20140303,0,4033135.story



Putin hints he may let 'fact-finding' team evaluate Ukraine crisis
By Carol J. Williams
March 3, 2014, 1:34 a.m.

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to a German proposal for international observers to review the tense standoff in Ukraine’s Crimea area, a Kremlin news service dispatch indicated Monday.

The proposal for a “contact group” of mediating foreign diplomats and an observer delegation to assess Moscow’s claims that ethnic Russians are threatened with violence under Ukraine’s new leadership was made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a late Sunday phone call to Putin, her spokesman told journalists in Berlin on Monday.

The Kremlin news service account of the conversation reiterated Putin’s defiant position that he has the right and obligation to take steps to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Ukraine, where politicians from what were opposition parties just two weeks ago have taken power in the vacuum opened up when deposed ex-President Viktor Yanukovich fled Kiev on Feb. 21 and took refuge in Russia.

“V. Putin and A. Merkel agreed to continue consultations both bilaterally and in multilateral forms with the aim of joint action in normalizing the social-political circumstances in Ukraine,” the Kremlin news service account of the two leaders’ conversation said.