welcome back. we are tracking that other big story, the unrest in the ukraine and the kind of east/west showdown over crimea. to kiev and cnn s michael holmes. president vladimir putin has been working the phones seems like every day we get another press release of who the president s been talking to. now we re getting russian press releases, as it were, about phone calls to david cameron in brittany and in germany angela merkel. is this beginning of a solution or is this a pr stunt? reporter: well, think they re getting out ahead the same as everyone else does. we ve heard david cameron and others put out releases when they ve had words with vladimir putin. this time we re seeing the kremlin get out first with their version of how it all went. he spoke with angela merkel,
minister flies to the u.s. this week to meet with president obama. that will be just a few days before crimea votes on whether it will become part of russia. the prime minister has called it an illegitimate decision, and today russian president vladimir putin spoke about ukraine and that upcoming vote with the british prime minister and the german chancellor. meanwhile, in russia a ukrainian paralympic athlete dedicated her first medal to an independent and peaceful ukraine. ukraine has won six medals in the paralympics so far. next hour in the cnn newsroom, the latest on the search for that missing malaysian plane, and we ll talk live with the former transportation department s inspector general who has investigated several crashes over the years. i m fredricka whitfield. see you at 2:00 eastern time. fareed zakaria: gps stars right now.
there s been prayers and speeches, dozens of international flags down there. it s been going on for hours now. in fact, one of the speakers was the russian oligarch who was once the richest man in russia until he spent ten years in jail in russia. and he came out throwing his support behind these protesters here. candy? michael holmes, always something going on in kiev. we are glad you are there for us. thanks so much. earlier i spoke with obama s deputy national security advisor. more now with tony blinken. it seems to me that for more than a week now, what we have is putin staying put and the president and the west saying you can t take over crimea, you need to leave crimea, and he hasn t budged. is there anything that has changed so far as you can tell under western pressure? oh, i think a lot s changed. first of all, the president has mobilized the international community in support of ukraine to isolate russia for its
right choice. the question is, and then what? because he doesn t seem so far to be susceptible to this kind of strong-arming. we ve heard secretary kerry apparently tell his counterpart in russia that diplomatic window would close if you move to annex crimea, well, what if he does? then what? when a diplomatic window is closed, what is there left to do that s that is real? well, first of all, if there is an annexation of crimea, if there is a referendum that moves crimea from ukraine to russia we won t recognize it, nor will most of the world. second, the pressure we already exerted in coordination with our partners and allies will go up. the president made it clear in announcing our sanctions, as did the europeans the other day, that this was a first step. we put in place a very flexible
the decision that crimea is more important to him than anything the west might be able to do economically. it s not a done deal. i think the door is clearly open to resolving this diplomatically. secretary kerry is engaged with his russian counterpart, foreign minister lavrov. the president can continue to choose this path, resulting in increasing costs and undermining russia s power and influence. or again, there is a very clear off-ramp that would involve getting international inspectors in to verify the concerns about the treatment of ethnic minorities, russia and ukraine talking directly, and tracking toward elections on may 25th. to the extent russia has so-called concerns about the legitimacy of the government, the solution is so-called elections. they are encouraged to make the