Ukraine tensions threaten summit

The Prime Minister said it was “hard to see” how the gathering of the powerful group of nations could go ahead in Sochi in June, and insisted “nothing should be off the table” in terms of sanctions.

The comments came after Foreign Secretary William Hague warned he was “not optimistic” of making progress in talks with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Paris later.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, Mr Cameron said it was important that the hastily assembled European Council meeting today showed “unity of purpose and a clear voice”.

“What I think we need to do is first of all be absolutely clear that the status quo we are faced with today, where Russian troops are outside their bases in the Crimea, is unacceptable.

“As I have said, costs and consequences need to follow from that. That is why, for instance, we have suspended preparations for the G8 meeting. Indeed, it is hard to see in these circumstances how a G8 meeting can properly go ahead.”

The premier said: “When we look at the diplomatic, economic and political steps we can take, nothing should be off the table.”

Mr Cameron said there had been “some contacts between Russian Ministers and Ukrainian Ministers”.

“There has been some progress in putting together a contact group...to start having a group of countries around Russia and Ukraine to encourage such dialogue to take place. That is the single most important thing that could happen to de-escalate the situation,” he said.

Russia declined to attend a meeting convened under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum yesterday, which provided Ukraine with assurances of security and territorial integrity when it gave up its nuclear weapons.

But Mr Lavrov will be at talks in the French capital that had been scheduled to discuss support for Lebanon, and are now expected to be dominated by the situation in Ukraine.

Mr Hague told reporters: “I am not optimistic about the outcome of that but of course it is right to try every diplomatic opportunity to de-escalate the crisis.

“If we cannot make progress on that, of course there will be costs and consequences... there has to be for such a violation of the independence and sovereignty of another nation.

“It will be a test this afternoon of whether Russia is prepared to sit down with Ukraine.”

Mr Hague appeared to play down the prospects of significant EU action being agreed, saying reaching a unified position required “a lot of hard work”.

While insisting Britain was “closely aligned” with France, he did not make the same claim about Germany, which has the strongest trading links with Russia.

The UK and US have urged Moscow to order troops which have seized key military and administrative locations in the Crimea back to their barracks and to allow the deployment of international observers from the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe to the southern peninsula, which is part of Ukraine but is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, under an agreement signed in 1997.

But speaking in Madrid en route to Paris, Mr Lavrov repeated president Vladimir Putin’s denial that the soldiers operating in uniforms without insignia were Russian troops, or under Moscow’s control.

The decision on whether monitors should be admitted was not for the Kremlin, but for the “supreme Soviet” of Crimea as well as the government in Kiev, which Mr Lavrov said was not in control of the largely Russian-speaking peninsula.