US President Barack Obama conferred with major industrialised allies in the Group of Seven yesterday on how to pressure Russia over its seizure of Crimea after Ukraine told its remaining troops to leave the region for their own safety.

Obama, who has imposed tougher sanctions on Moscow than European leaders over its takeover of the Black Sea peninsula, sought backing for his firm line at a meeting deliberately called to exclude Russia, which joined in 1998 to form the G8.

Europeans wary of economic sanctions, fear for own economies

“As long as the political environment for the G8 is not at hand, as is the case at the moment, there is no G8 – neither as a concrete summit meeting or even as a format for meetings,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said before the talks.

She said she did not expect the hour-long session of leaders of the US, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Britain and Italy, plus the EU, to decide on new sanctions, although the leaders would discuss possible further measures to be taken if the situation escalates. Since the emergency meeting held on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in The Hague was announced last week, President Vladimir Putin has signed laws completing Russia’s annexation of the region.

Russian troops forced their way into a Ukrainian marine base in the port of Feodosia early yesterday, overrunning one of the last remaining symbols of resistance.

In Kiev, acting president Oleksander Turchinov told Parliament the remaining Ukrainian troops and their families would be pulled out of the region in the face of “threats to the lives and health of our service personnel”.

That effectively ends any Ukrainian resistance, less than a month since Putin claimed Russia’s right to intervene militarily on its neighbour’s territory.

White House officials accompanying Obama yesterday expressed concern at what they said was a Russian troop build-up near Ukraine and warned that any further military intervention would trigger wider sanctions than the measures taken so far.

In the biggest East-West confrontation since the Cold War, the US and the EU have imposed visa bans and asset freezes on some of Putin’s closest political and business allies.