Obama, Europeans huddle on Ukraine

President Obama huddled with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and other European leaders Thursday morning on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Wales for a discussion on how to respond to Russia’s latest actions in Ukraine.

{mosads}Poroshenko is expected to update the leaders — which include the heads of Britain, France, Germany and Italy — on the latest peace talks between Kiev and the Kremlin. Negotiations are set to resume on Friday in Minsk, Belarus.

On Wednesday, Poroshenko’s office announced that it had struck a cease-fire agreement in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, only to have the Kremlin subsequently deny any such agreement or the involvement of Russian forces in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Putin later unilaterally released a seven-point peace plan, but Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk denounced that effort as an “attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.”

The leaders did not make any statements to reporters at the top of their meeting in Wales, but on Wednesday, President Obama announced that the U.S. would beef up its military presence in NATO’s Baltic allies in a bid to reassure other countries sharing a border with Russia.

The U.S. is also expected to advocate for additional sanctions against Russia, after satellite imagery has revealed Russian troops to be operating within Ukraine, while France and Germany announced ahead of the meeting they were halting lucrative defense contracts with Moscow.

And NATO is expected to approve during the meeting a $15.8 million aid package for Ukraine that would boost Kiev’s military and cyber defense capabilities. The U.S., Ukraine and other European allies are also expected to conduct joint military drills in western Ukraine later this month.

In an op-ed released Wednesday night, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote that NATO countries “can and should use all levers” to pressure Moscow over its actions in Ukraine.

“Russia has ripped up the rulebook with its illegal, self-declared annexation of Crimea and its troops on Ukrainian soil threatening and undermining a sovereign nation state. We should support Ukraine’s right to determine its own democratic future and continue our efforts to enhance Ukrainian capabilities,” the pair wrote.