The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, has said that sanctions against Russia could begin as early as this week if Moscow does not respond to western proposals to solve the crisis in Ukraine, reports The Guardian.
"If they respond positively, [the US secretary of state] John Kerry will go to Moscow and then sanctions will not be immediate. If they do not respond or if they respond negatively, there will be a series of sanctions that could be taken as early as this week," he said on France Inter radio.
Western officials will meet in London on Tuesday to identify Russians who will be subject to asset freezes and travel bans that officials hope will persuade Moscow to withdraw from Crimea.
The British prime minister, David Cameron, has indicated that sanctions could be imposed within days, as tensions escalated in the Crimean peninsula where unidentified men reportedly fired warning shots as they moved into a Ukrainian naval base on Monday.
Kerry has sent Russia a series of proposals to try to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine, which plans to hold a referendum on Sunday over switching the region's allegiance from Kiev to Moscow.
But the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in a televised meeting on Monday that the proposals "do not suit us very much", adding that Moscow would propose its own solution to the crisis.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.