An exerpt from "Merkel Hits Diplomatic Dead-End With Putin" by Noah Barkin and Andreas Rinke of Reuters:
After nine months of non-stop German diplomacy to defuse the crisis in Ukraine, Chancellor Angela Merkel decided in mid-November that a change of tack was needed.
Ahead of a summit of G20 leaders in Australia, Merkel resolved to confront Vladimir Putin alone, without the usual pack of interpreters and aides.
Instead of challenging him on what she saw as a string of broken promises, she would ask the Russian president to spell out exactly what he wanted in Ukraine and other former Soviet satellites the Kremlin had started bombarding with propaganda.
On Nov. 15 at 10 p.m., a world away from the escalating violence in eastern Ukraine, the two met on the eighth floor of the Brisbane Hilton. The meeting did not go as hoped.
For nearly four hours, Merkel -- joined around midnight by new European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker -- tried to get the former KGB agent, a fluent German speaker, to let down his guard and clearly state his intentions.
But all the chancellor got from Putin, officials briefed on the conversation told Reuters, were the same denials and dodges she had been hearing for months.
"He radiated coldness," one official said of the encounter. "Putin has dug himself in and he can't get out."
Read the entire story here.
Here's another Ukraine-related item from RFE/RL's news desk:
Ukraine's eastern city of Poltava has stripped Russian singer and lawmaker Yosif Kobzon of honorary citizenship.
The Poltava City Council decided on November 25 that the title given to Kobzon in 2002 must be withdrawn because of his anti-Ukrainian stance.
Kobzon, who was born in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk in 1937, was extremely popular as a singer in Soviet times.
Kobzon, who is also a member of the Russian Duma, has been supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin's policy toward Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea in March, and the pro-Russian rebels in his native Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
In September, another city in Ukraine's east, Dnipropetrovsk, stripped Kobzon of his honorary citizenship.
The Ukrainian Security Service has placed Kobzon on the list of individuals banned from entering the country.
(UNIAN, Interfax)
It seems many senior Russian politicians are still wary of anything to do with NATO and have no qualms about saying so (from RFE/RL's news desk):
Russia has warned that an announcement by Ukraine's president that a referendum should be held on NATO membership would increase regional tensions.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, asked on November 24 whether Ukraine would seek to join NATO, held out the prospect of a referendum in several years' time.
Speaking in Kyiv alongside visiting Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, he added that attempts to join now would cause "more harm than good."
On November 25, the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying: "I am convinced that what has been announced now by the Ukrainian leadership will only lead to further escalation of the situation around Ukraine."
Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow wants "a 100-percent guarantee that no-one would think about Ukraine joining NATO."
Meanwhile, the Kremlin-allied speaker of Russia's lower parliament house says NATO's European members should expel the United States from the alliance.
State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin, speaking on November 25 in Moscow at an international roundtable discussion about the situation in Europe, said: "I have a fantastic proposal: I would suggest that our European partners expel the United States of America from this bloc."
According to Naryshkin, the stability and security of Europe would increase swiftly if the United States was ejected from NATO.
Naryshkin added that NATO's "European members provided half of the alliance's budget during the Cold War era, while their current contributions barely reach 25 percent."
Russian officials have often criticized the United States for imposing its will on NATO, and Kremlin critics say Moscow frequently tries to create rifts between the United States and Europe.
(TASS, Interfax, Reuters)