Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are under pressure to shore up western unity over the Ukraine crisis on Monday, amid growing US scepticism that European peace talks with Russia will succeed in deterring its continued military support for separatists.



The German chancellor will hold four hours of talks at the White House and a joint press conference on Monday as US calls for a tougher approach risk overshadowing continuing diplomatic efforts planned for Minsk on Wednesday.

Though appetite for arming Ukraine remains limited within the White House, calls have been growing elsewhere in the administration as well as in Congress for this to change, and Obama is expected to push for tougher economic penalties at the very least.

“[Vladimir Putin] is leaving the global community with no choice but to continue to either put more sanctions in place or to provide additional assistance to Ukraine,” US secretary of state John Kerry said in an interview aired on Sunday. “Hopefully he will come to a point where he realises the damage he is doing is not just to the global order, but he is doing enormous damage to Russia itself.”

Incoming US defense secretary Ash Carter went further last week, telling lawmakers he “very much incline[s]” towards arming the Ukrainian government, and questioned whether the administration was “in fact doing enough” to deter Russia from attacking the US Baltic allies in Nato.

Since weekend talks in Moscow failed to produce an immediate deal, Republican critics of Obama’s approach are also growing louder.

“It is long past time for us to step forward and provide defensive weapons to the people of Ukraine,” Senator Ted Cruz told CNN on Sunday. “There is no [transatlantic] rift,” he added. “What we are seeing is when American doesn’t lead, Europe cannot be expected to step into the breach. What is missing is the president of the United States.”

German diplomats acknowledge that if no deal is in sight by the time Merkel and Obama meet, then the two leaders will have to seek tougher alternatives, even though the Germans remain deeply concerned at the prospect of arming Ukraine. “A lot depends on whether these talks open up a new potential for diplomacy,” said German ambassador to the US Peter Wittig ahead of the weekend meeting in Moscow.

President Putin demanded on Monday that the Ukrainian government conduct direct talks with pro-Russian separatist rebels if there was to be any chance of agreeing a durable ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

In the midst of the most intensive week of diplomacy since the Ukraine crisis erupted a year ago and with western leaders warning of a major upsurge in violence if this week’s negotiations fail, there was scant sign of any let-up in the war of words between the Kremlin and western capitals.

“The Ukrainian crisis was not caused by the Russian Federation,” said Putin in remarks posted on the Kremlin website. “It emerged in response to the attempts of the US and its western allies – who consider themselves ‘winners’ of the cold war – to impose their will everywhere.”

The remarks reinforced western suspicions that Putin has never accepted the outcome of the collapse of Soviet and east European communism in 1989-91 and is engaged in an attempt to revise the results of the post-cold war order in Europe.

In advance of the Minsk summit on Wednesday, Putin has presented a nine-page peace plan which demands that the separatists be treated as equals in the negotiations, expands the territory under their control under a new ceasefire line, insists on a halt to Ukrainian attacks on rebel-held territory and also that the government in Kiev should continue to supply public funding to the rebel-held areas beyond its control.

With Ukraine crippled, unstable and in economic freefall, Putin appeared to have the stronger hand. In return for ceasefire guarantees in Minsk, the west and Kiev may have to agree to the new ceasefire line and cede greater “autonomous” territory to the rebels.

The French, attending the Minsk talks, lent credence to that view. “These people have been fighting a war against each other. It would be hard for them to live together,” President François Hollande told French television. The rebel-held eastern areas needed “strong autonomy”.

EU foreign ministers met in Brussels to slap new sanctions on the rebels and on Russian officials. But it appeared the decisions would be put on hold pending the outcome in Minsk.

If there is no agreement in Minsk, an EU summit of leaders on Thursday will also hear stronger calls for more sweeping economic sanctions against Russia, with Britain, which now brands Putin a “tyrant”, leading the hawks.

Failure to agree in Minsk will also worsen the emerging transatlantic split over whether the west should arm Ukraine.

Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin and calculating that the west may need to prepare for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia and seeking to build up Ukraine.

Putin cannot be beaten militarily so there is no point arming Ukraine, she argued at the weekend, raising the precedent of the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and how it took 30 years to overcome the division of Germany.

Merkel’s apparent determination to stand up peacefully to Putin, though, begs the question of whether a divided European Union of 28 states has the stomach for the long haul and whether it will be able to sustain the pressure of sanctions which are also hurting the EU.

Senior diplomats in Brussels say that EU governments are already raising questions about the amount of money needed to shore up and reform Ukraine. It needs some 15bn euros this year alone, with the EU so far offering less than 2bn. EU finance ministers are also keen to keep Russia onside and have it contribute to the costs of supporting Ukraine, senior officials say.

The west, said Putin, was engaged in a campaign “to tear states which had been parts of the former USSR off Russia and to prompt them to make an artificial choice between Russia and Europe”.