Ler Merckel News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> reporter: they spoke for an hour, anderson. one thing that did come up during the phone call is according to a senior administration official the german chancellor is working on an off ramp to get putin out of the crisis and out of crimea or at least to get the russian forces back into their base in crimea and what that off ramp involves is bringing in international observers to basically look after the interest of ethnic russians, a key putin concern. by the way, administration officials say that concern is bogus at this point. ethnic russians aren't being threatened in ukraine and willing...

All of these barricades remane just as they were more than a week and a half ago at the brunt of the fighting here. as i said, it's a day of extraordinary developments both here in kiev and in crimea. unarmed ukrainian troops walking into gun fire. russian troops firing into the air. we'll show that video shortly. that happened in crimea. vladimir putin speaking out making some outlandish claims. we'll show you that president obama challenging him on the facts. we have also new details emerging about their recent phone call. new reporting also on possible efforts to offer president vladimir pu...

Words. the u.s. may be able to deescalate the crisis in the coming days so interesting to hear the president using the words, perhaps a hopeful sign about the way the white house feels about what's happening in ukraine at this point. but getting to that phone call, yes, as we all know it took place on saturday. 90 minutes long and according to a senior administration official briefing reporters on that phone call earlier this evening, the president and vladimir putin spent much of that time during that phone call debating the facts on the ground with respect to what's happening on the ground i...

Offramp, if you will. a senior administration official says that german chancellor merckel spoke with president obama today reportedly about her efforts to construct some kind of offramp for vladimir putin. a lot of developments to talk about. all throughout this next hour, but first, you just want to give you a round-up, the big moments from today. take a look. a tense standoff between russian and ukrainian forces at an air base in crimea. base has been surrounded by russian troops for the past few days. ukrainian commander walks unarmed towards the russians. two rifles pointed right at him. ...

No, putin, you're wrong. so interesting to see that just in that phone call there was sort of a tense dynamic going on, anderson. >> and the president also spoke with german chance ler merckel. do you know much about that conversation? >> reporter: they spoke for an hour, anderson. one thing that did come up during the phone call is according to a senior administration official the german chancellor is working on an off ramp to get putin out of the crisis and out of crimea or at least to get the russian forces back into their base in crimea and what that off ramp involves is bringing in intern...