Putin meets with European leaders over Ukraine; little progress made

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with European leaders Friday, but little progress was made toward ending the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine. Putin continued to insist his nation bears no responsibility for the conflict that has taken more than 3,700 lives since April.

“We note with regret that several summiteers are absolutely unwilling to understand the real situation in southeast Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters after Putin’s breakfast meeting with the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and the European Commission.

Friday’s talks in Milan, Italy, were “really difficult, full of contradictions and misunderstanding,” Peskov said. He did, however, call the meeting a useful exchange of views.

Ukrainian and Western leaders accuse Putin of instigating the separatists and of sending in Russian arms and fighters. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the West’s military alliance, has provided satellite surveillance imagery showing Russian troops and armored columns crossing into Ukraine through borders controlled by separatists.

The eastern rebellions began days after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region in mid-March. Putin had sent Russian paratroopers the month before to seize the strategic peninsula.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had hailed the two-day meeting in Milan as an opportunity to shore up a battered Sept. 5 cease-fire that was supposed to be a first step toward restoring peace after six months of war with pro-Russia separatists in his country’s east.

Putin arrived late to the summit, forcing a four-hour delay of his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The German leader and Putin met for more than two hours late Thursday into early Friday to discuss the Ukraine crisis and the threat of interrupted natural gas deliveries to Western Europe this winter. European Union countries import about 30% of their gas supplies from Russia, and half of it travels through pipelines across Ukraine, which is mired in a dispute with Russia’s Gazprom over the price of its own imports.

“We are closer together on some questions of detail, but the central point is whether the territorial integrity of Ukraine is really respected,” Merkel said after a morning of talks, the Associated Press reported.

Fighting continued Friday in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where a months-long battle for control of the airport has destroyed the terminal and pockmarked runways. Artillery exchanges in the southeast also persisted, with three Ukrainian soldiers killed over the previous 24 hours, said Col. Andriy Lysenko, National Security and Defense Council spokesman. The death toll during the six weeks of purported cease-fire is nearing 400.

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