Polish FM: Phone call from Putin Ended Maidan Bloodshed

The voice on the phone that persuaded President Yanukovych to give ground and end the bloodshed in Kiev last week belonged to an unexpected peacemaker: Vladimir Putin. Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s three-month political crisis has often been depicted as a spoiling role, but, according to Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, it was President Putin’s intervention that proved decisive when the tension was at its height. intervention that proved decisive when the tension was at its height. At the time President Yanukovych was still stubbornly “fighting hard to preserve whatever he could and yield the least” in ­negotiations with opposition leaders and European diplomats.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4016262.ece