...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...to pressure pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine to hold talks with Kiev, a Gay Paree statement said.
Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
and Barack Obama
Because I won...
spoke by telephone for 45 minutes and "called on President Putin to pressure the separatists so that they agree to a dialogue with the Ukrainian authorities and to reinforce control over the Russian-Ukrainian border," said a French presidency statement.
Obama and Hollande also called for a meeting "as quickly as possible with separatist elements, with the view to reaching a bilateral ceasefire," it said. "A durable solution to the crisis in Ukraine can only be a political one."