The United States and the European Union agreed on Wednesday to work together to prepare possible tougher economic sanctions in response to Russia's behavior in Ukraine, including on the energy sector, and to make Europe less dependent on Russian gas.
U.S. President Barack Obama said after a summit with top EU officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin had miscalculated if he thought he could divide the West or count on its indifference over his annexation of Crimea.
Leaders of the Group of Seven major industrial powers decided this week to hold off on sanctions targeting Moscow's economy unless Putin took further action to destabilize Ukraine or other former Soviet republics.
In the keynote address of his European trip, Obama later told an audience of 2,000 young people that the West would prevail if it remained united, not by military action but by the power of its values to attract ordinary Ukrainians.
Russia would not be "dislodged from Crimea or deterred from further escalation by military force. But with time, so long as we remain united, the Russian people will recognize that they cannot achieve security, prosperity, and the status they seek through brute force," he said.
In the speech in a Brussels concert hall, which resembled a point-by-point rebuttal of Putin's March 18 Kremlin speech announcing the annexation of Crimea, Obama voiced respect for a strong Russia but said "that does not mean that Russia can run roughshod over its neighbors".
He also said NATO would step up its presence in new east European member states bordering on Russia and Ukraine to provide reassurance that the alliance's mutual defense guarantee would protect them.
Russian forces in Crimea captured the last Ukrainian navy ship after firing warning shots and stun grenades, completing Moscow's takeover of military installations in the Black Sea peninsula. Kiev has ordered its forces to withdraw.
Western concern has focused on an estimated 30,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine's eastern border amid Kremlin allegations of attacks on Russian speakers in that industrial region of the country.
The new Ukrainian authorities announced a radical 50% increase in the price of domestic gas from May 1, meeting an unpopular condition for International Monetary Fund aid which Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovich had refused before he was ousted last month. Russia has said it will increase the price it charges Ukraine for gas from April.
The IMF concluded talks with Ukrainian officials on Wednesday, and was likely to announce an aid deal on Thursday for Kiev to help plug the government's budget gap and put its economy on a growth track. Ukraine has been seeking a bailout package of between $15 and $20 billion U.S.
