Obama, Ukrainian confer, warn Putin

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama called Russia’s incursion into Crimea a violation of international law and told Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that the U.S. stands with Ukraine to protect its sovereignty and territory.

If Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t change course, the U.S. and the international community “will be forced to apply a cost,” Obama said after meeting with Yatsenyuk at the White House on Wednesday.

“There’s another path available, and we hope President Putin is willing to seize that path,” Obama said.

Obama suggested that if Russia backs down, there could be “different arrangements over time” for Crimea in line with Ukraine’s Constitution. “But that is not something that can be done with the barrel of a gun pointed at you.”

Yatsenyuk, a pro-Western official who speaks fluent English, declared that his country “will never surrender” in its fight to protect its territory.

But he said the government in Kiev was open to talks with Russia, telling Obama that Ukraine can be a part of “the Western world” as well as a “good friend and partner” of Russia.

“Mr. Putin, tear down this wall. The wall of war, intimidation and military aggression,” Yatsenyuk said afterward, warning that Russia may move beyond Crimea to invade central Ukraine. “Let’s stop. Let’s calm down.”

Obama’s meeting with the Ukrainian leader was a show of support for the government in Kiev in its standoff with Russia, whose troops seized the Crimean Peninsula after an uprising in Kiev toppled the Moscow-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Yatsenyuk is seeking financial help to stabilize his fledgling government. A U.S. Senate bill that advanced out of committee on Wednesday would authorize $1 billion in loan guarantees.

The measure, which now goes to the full Senate, also would allow the Obama administration to impose economic penalties on Russian officials responsible for the intervention in Crimea.

“Putin has miscalculated by playing a game of Russian roulette with the international community, but we refuse to blink and will never accept this violation of international law,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

In the 14-3 vote, all committee Democrats supported the measure. Some Republicans expressed concerns about how the U.S. would pay for the loan guarantees and about provisions to expand the lending authority of the International Monetary Fund.

The bill stops short of going after Russian banks or energy companies as some legislators proposed.

With the approach of a referendum Sunday in Crimea on reuniting with Russia, Obama and U.S. allies in Europe have been ratcheting up the threat of sanctions if Putin doesn’t take steps to defuse the situation.

The U.S. has put in place travel bans for Russian and Ukrainian officials involved in the Crimea advances. And the seven other member nations of the Group of Eight have suspended plans to attend their annual summit, which was to be held in Russia this summer.

The confrontation has become the biggest between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. and other members of the Group of Seven countries warned in a statement Wednesday that Russian annexation of Crimea “could have grave implications.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meeting in Warsaw on Wednesday with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, reiterated a Monday deadline for Russia to accept her government’s overtures for a diplomatic “contact group” to resolve the crisis.

European Union foreign ministers are prepared to draft a series of punitive measures including asset freezes and visa curbs at the beginning of next week, she said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Yatsenyuk earlier Wednesday, said at a congressional hearing that he’d travel to London today for a meeting Friday with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to seek a way forward. He said the U.S. and its allies are ready to exert maximum pressure on Russia.

Sanctions could “get ugly fast if the wrong choices are made,” Kerry said. “And it can get ugly in multiple directions.”

Putin so far has refused to back down. His government contends ethnic Russians in Crimea are at risk after the ouster of Yanukovych, an assertion Ukraine’s new leaders deny. Putin supports Crimea’s recently appointed administration, which organized Sunday’s referendum.

The autonomous Black Sea region’s premier, Sergei Aksyonov, said Wednesday that Crimea can be integrated into Russia within two months if voters approve.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s First Deputy Premier Vitaliy Yarema told the government in Kiev that Russian forces, which already have blockaded or taken over bases in Crimea, are amassing along Ukraine’s eastern frontier.

Russian forces control the roads leading to the peninsula, have taken charge of a ferry crossing at Kerch and blocked harbors, Ukrainian border guards said.

Andriy Parubiy, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Russia has deployed more than 80,000 troops, up to 270 tanks and 140 combat planes close to the border, creating the “threat of a full-scale invasion from various directions.”

Parubiy said some of the Russian forces are as close as a two- or three-hour drive from Kiev.

Parubiy added that Ukrainian authorities had denied 3,700 Russian citizens permission to enter Ukraine because they were suspected of being involved in extremism and sabotage.

In Moscow, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov denied a military buildup on the nearly 1,250-mile border. He also said Moscow has accepted a request that Ukraine made Tuesday to conduct a surveillance flight over Russian territory.

Antonov said that while Russia was not obliged to allow such a flight, it decided to issue permission for one so that Ukraine can see for itself that “Russian armed forces aren’t conducting any military activities near the border of Ukraine that could threaten its security.”

In addition, NATO on Wednesday deployed two surveillance aircraft to monitor Ukraine’s airspace and Black Sea ship movements.

NATO headquarters spokesman Lt. Col. Jay Janzen said one Boeing E-3 Sentry aircraft based in England would observe Russian air and sea movements from Polish airspace, while the other, based in Germany, would fly over Romania.

Both Poland and Romania are NATO members and border Ukraine. Romania’s Black Sea coast is only about 140 miles from the Crimean Peninsula.

Also Wednesday, a Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, said the U.S. is sending 12 F-16 fighter jets to Poland to augment the Air Force detachment there. He said there is no scheduled departure date for the fighter jets and they will be there “until further notice.”

Last week, the Pentagon sent six F-15 fighter jets to Lithuania to bolster air patrols over the Baltics, adding to the four that previously had been there for the mission.

In Belarus, an ally of Russia, President Alexander Lukashenko said Wednesday that Russia should respond to the U.S. and NATO actions by basing 12 to 15 more fighter jets in his country. Belarus, which Lukashenko has led for nearly 20 years, already hosts four Russian fighter jets, and the two allies have held joint war games.

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said the crisis has put the entire region on edge.

“Every neighbor around Russia, their concern is, if the Russians take a chunk of Ukraine’s territory, will they come and look at us next?” said Pifer, who directs the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a policy center in Washington. “You have a lot of countries around Russia much more worried today than two weeks ago.” Information for this article was contributed by Margaret Talev, Katherine Peralta, Derek Wallbank and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg News and by Bradley Klapper, Julie Pace, Maria Danilova, Vladimir Isachenkov, Monika Scislowska, Kirsten Grieshaber, David Rising and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.