Barack Obama: Russia must pull back troops from Ukraine border

President says Putin should begin negotiations directly with Ukrainian government and international community

Barack Obama has called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukraine border and start negotiating.

Obama told CBS News that the decision by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to assemble forces on the border may "simply be an effort to intimidate Ukraine, or it may be that they've got additional plans". Although estimates of troop numbers vary, Obama said that "to de-escalate the situation" Russia should "move back those troops and begin negotiations directly with the Ukrainian government as well as the international community".

He also said Putin had been "willing to show a deeply held grievance about what he considers to be the loss of the Soviet Union", and the Russian leader should not "revert back to the kinds of practices that … were so prevalent during the cold war".

"There's a strong sense of Russian nationalism and a sense that somehow the west has taken advantage of Russia in the past and that he [Putin] wants to in some fashion … reverse that or make up for that," Obama said.

"What I have repeatedly said is that he may be entirely misreading the west. He's certainly misreading American foreign policy. We have no interest in circling Russia and we have no interest in Ukraine beyond letting Ukrainian people make their own decisions about their own lives."