Obama warns Ukraine to ‘avoid violence or face consequences’

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday, Feb 19, urged Ukraine “to avoid violence against peaceful protesters or face consequences,” as the United States considered joining European partners to impose sanctions aimed at ending deadly street clashes, the Associated Press reports.

"There will be consequences if people step over the line," Obama said shortly after landing in Mexico for a summit with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, as fires burned in central Kiev. "And that includes making sure that the Ukrainian military does not step in to what should be a set of issues that can be resolved by civilians."

Shortly after Obama's remarks, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's office said he and opposition leaders had agreed on a truce, although the brief statement offered no details about what it would entail or how it would be implemented. Obama later responded that he hoped a truce would "provide space for the sides to resolve their disagreements peacefully."

"Ultimately the government's responsible for making sure that we shift toward some sort of unity government, even if it's temporary, that allows us to move to fair and free elections so that the will of the Ukrainian people can be rightly expressed without the kinds of chaos we've seen on the streets, without the bloodshed that all of us, I think, strongly condemn," Obama said at an evening news conference with his fellow North American leaders.

Obama said he is monitoring the Ukrainian violence "very carefully."

"We expect the Ukrainian government to show restraint and to not resort to violence when dealing with peaceful protesters," Obama said, according to the AP.

Secretary of State John Kerry, in Paris for meetings with Fabius and others, said he was disturbed by the level of abuse demonstrated by the Ukrainian government and protesters.

"We are talking about the possibility of sanctions or other steps in order to create the atmosphere for compromise," he said.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday what sort of sanctions or penalties the U.S. could impose.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said visa restrictions already have been imposed against some members of the Ukrainian government, and cited "different kinds of individual sanctions that can be levied" without being specific. She said officials are still trying to determine who is responsible for the violence and described a sense of urgency within the Obama administration "to make decisions very, very soon about what we will do next."

Deadly clashes between police and anti-government protesters in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Tuesday left 26 people dead and hundreds injured.