PARIS (AP) - Attempts to foster the highest-level diplomatic meeting between Russia and Ukraine since Moscow ordered troops into Ukraine's strategic Crimea region fell short Wednesday as Western officials scrambled for even small successes to keep the tense situation from escalating.
As peace efforts got underway in Paris and Brussels, volatility reigned on the ground in Ukraine: A special U.N. envoy visiting Crimea came under threat by armed men who forced him to leave the region. Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators, many chanting "Russia! Russia!" stormed a government building in eastern Ukraine - renewing fears that turmoil could spill out of Crimea and engulf other Russian-dominated parts of Ukraine.
Ukraine Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia said he canceled a flight home to Kiev after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged him to stay in Paris on the outside chance that Russia's top diplomat might agree to talk. But separate evening meetings in the same building ended without Deshchytsia and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov crossing paths.
In an afternoon interview with The Associated Press, Deshchytsia said he hoped to brief Lavrov on a Ukraine plan to offer a pro-Russian public in Crimea more autonomy while still claiming it within the country's borders. Any vote taken toward for autonomy would require international observers to replace armed groups in order to work, he said.
"Our position is to use all the peaceful means, all the diplomatic ways to settle the issue without victims and tragedy - and without taking territory away," Deshchytsia said. "We don't want war with Russia," he said.
But Lavrov made clear he was not ready to meet.
Leaving the French Foreign Ministry, Lavrov was asked by reporters outside if he had met with his Ukranian counterpart Wednesday night. "Who is it?" Lavrov answered. "I didn't see anybody."
He said officials "agreed to continue those discussions in the days to come to see how best we can help stabilize, normalize the situation and overcome the crisis."
"The discussions will continue and that's it."
The comments made clear how elusive any resolution remains in the standoff between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the upstart government in neighboring Ukraine that ousted its Moscow-friendly president last month. Putin responded by sending troops to Crimea, a pro-Russian peninsula in southeastern Ukraine where some are demanding a referendum for independence from Kiev.
In remarks to reporters late Wednesday, Kerry said at least some small successes were made during the daylong negotiations with each side and signaled that at least some plan was in the works that needs to gain approval from state leaders in Moscow, Kiev and Washington.
"I'd rather be where we are today than where we were yesterday," Kerry said. He also said he had "no expectations, zero expectations" that Deshchytsia and Lavrov would meet.
"Today, I believe we initiated a process that over the next couple of days we hope can bring us to that de-escalation," Kerry said.
Wednesday's Paris gathering, originally scheduled to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis, came after Putin appeared to step back from the brink of war, telling reporters in his first comments since the Crimea takeover that he has no intention to "fight the Ukrainian people."
NATO tried to apply pressure on Moscow in its own talks with Russia in Brussels.
The Western alliance's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that ambassadors for the alliances 28 member states decided after a meeting with their Russian counterpart to suspend plans for a joint mission as well as all civilian and military meetings.
Rasmussen said because of Russia's military action in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, "the entire range of NATO-Russia cooperation (is) under review." Rasmussen said the alliance will continue to meet with Moscow at the political level but insisted that halting all other cooperation "sends a very clear message to Russia."
One key piece of leverage that the West has over nearly bankrupt Ukraine: hard cash. The three months of protests that triggered Ukraine's crisis erupted when Yanukovych accepted $15 billion in aid from Putin in exchange for dropping an economic partnership deal with the EU. On Wednesday, the EU matched the aid - which the Russians withdrew after Yanukovych's downfall - and the U.S. topped that up with an additional $1 billion.
In Crimea, U.N. special envoy Robert Serry was threatened by 10 to 15 armed men as he was leaving naval headquarters in Crimea, said U.N. deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson. When the men ordered Serry to go to the airport, Serry refused - but then found himself trapped because his car was blocked, Eliasson said.
The Dutch envoy was later spotted by reporters in a coffee shop, as men in camouflage outfits stood outside. He got into a van with the men, and was taken to Simferopol airport.
Later, an AP reporter found Serry in the business class lounge of the Simferopol airport.
"I'm safe. My visit was interrupted for reasons that I cannot understand," the Dutch diplomat said in a statement to AP. He said nothing more.