G7 Leaders Urge Putin to Stop Destabilizing Ukraine

Leaders of the G7 group urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop destabilizing Ukraine as the super power nations have limited themselves to warning Russia of another round of sanctions.

On the group’s summit in Brussels on Wednesday, the group said that Russia must pull its troops back from its country’s border with Ukraine, saying in a joint statement that “Actions to destabilise eastern Ukraine are unacceptable and must stop.”

In the same statement released after the meeting, the group said “We stand ready to intensify targeted sanctions and to implement significant additional restrictive measures to impose further costs on Russia should events so require.”

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, however, said that further sanctions would take effect only if there had been “no progress whatsoever”.

Aljazeera report said Putin, despite being banned from the group’s summit after Russia’s annexation of Crimea on March, reached out for a dialogue saying he is ready to meet Ukraine’s president-elect Petro Poroshenko and US President Barack Obama.

Obama, however, shows no signs of wanting a meeting with his Russian counterpart.

Obama and Putin will be in France’s Normandy to mark the 70th anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings in Europe, report said.

Sources: Aljazeera, CNN

Image Credit: www.aljazeera.com