Putin Says He Has a Plan for Peace in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a seven-point peace plan for eastern Ukraine on Wednesday that he jotted down in a notebook on a flight to a state visit to Mongolia. While Putin's proposed specifics and enforcement mechanism remain unclear, his first point called for Ukraine and the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine to "end active offensive operations," the New York Times reports. Putin spoke with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko over the phone on Wednesday, and talks between Kiev and the separatists are planned for Friday. But Putin's ideas dismissed by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk as "deceptive." They also came the night before a NATO summit in Wales, where Western leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, are gathering to discuss plans to end the conflict in Ukraine and to draw down NATO's presence in Afghanistan. NATO says that more than 1,000 Russian soldiers were operating in eastern Ukraine. "What counts is what is actually happening on the ground," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, according to the Associated Press. "And we are still witnessing, unfortunately, Russian involvement in destabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine.", NYT