Rusland waarschuwt EU weg te blijven uit Syrië (en)

BRUSSELS - Vladimir Putin i has made clear that he will not budge an inch on Syria ahead of an EU i-Russia summit.

Speaking in separate press events in Berlin and Paris on Friday (1 June), he ruled out lifitng his UN Security Council veto on economic sanctions or military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

He also blamed civilian deaths on opposition forces and denied that Russia is selling weapons to Damascus.

"Russia does not provide weapons that could be used in a civil conflict," he said in the German capital.

"How many peaceful civilians were killed by the opposite side? Did you count? The count goes into the hundreds there too. Our goal is to make peace between the sides of the conflict," he noted later in the French capital when asked about the recent massacre in Houla, western Syria.

He also criticised Western expansionism in general, noting that Nato is pressing ahead with plans for missile interceptors in eastern Europe in what Russia sees as a threat to its nuclear deterrent.

"They promised us they would not expand Nato, then they promised not to deploy bases, but Nato is expanding and moving east and bases are springing up like mushrooms," he noted.

Top EU officials Herman Van Rompuy i, Jose Manuel Barroso i and Catherine Ashton i began one of their regular, twice-yearly Russia summits with a dinner on Sunday in an 18th century tsarist palace on the outskirts of St Petersburg.

The EU's energy commissioner Gunther Oetteinger and Russia's energy minister Alexander Novak are also taking part.

"I am now at the EU-Russia Summit and Syria is one of the key issues we will discuss," Ashton said in a statement published the same day.

In terms of EU-level business, Putin is expected: to urge the EU to back down on an energy law which could force Russian energy champion Gazprom to sell off assets in Europe; to seek EU endorsement of Russia's South Stream gas pipeline project; to rethink another EU law on forcing foreign airlines to pay CO2 emissions taxes; and to speed up work on EU-Russia visa-free travel.

For its part, the EU side is keen to find out if Putin still backs the Partnership for Modernisation, what he plans to do about a new EU-Russia strategic treaty and about the Eurasian Union.

Barroso launched the modernisation scheme - a plan for swapping high-end EU technology in return for political reform in Russia - with Putin's predecessor Dmitry Medvedev in 2010.

There were no reforms in the Medvedev years despite the deal.

Meanwhile, an EU official told EUobserver ahead of the summit that Russia does not really listen to Brussels on human rights and rule of law. "It's above our paygrade," the contact said.

The new EU-Russia treaty is to replace the existing bilateral agreement which dates back to 1995. But talks have stalled in recent years.

Putin's Eurasian Union plan is designed to draw Belarus, Ukraine and Central Asian countries into an EU-type construction over the coming years in competition with EU plans to help protect Belarusian independence and to draw Ukraine closer to the West.

A Russian diplomat told this website that Putin in his first two terms as president tried to establish order in Russia following the break-up of the Soviet Union. But that the Eurasian Union project will create the main "ideological vision" for his current presidency.

He added on the future pace of post-Soviet integration that: "There is a Russian saying: it takes a long time to saddle a horse, but then it gallops away quickly."

Putin is to travel to Uzbekistan shortly after wrapping up the EU talks at lunchtime on Monday.