President Vladimir Putin on Friday rejected Western accusations that a referendum on whether Ukraine's Crimea region should join Russia would be illegal, making clear the vote would go ahead as planned on Sunday.
In a telephone conversation with U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon, Putin "underscored that the decision to conduct (the referendum) fully corresponds to the norms of international law and the U.N. Charter", the Kremlin said.
For his part, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said there would be an even greater response if Russia further increased tensions in Ukraine and threatened its people.
After holding six hours of "direct and candid" talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in London, Kerry said the U.S. and international community would not recognize the outcome of the referendum in Crimea on Sunday.
He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not prepared to make any decision on Crimea until after the vote.
"If Russia does establish facts on the ground that increase tensions or that threaten the Ukrainian people then obviously that will beg an even greater response and there will be costs," Kerry told reporters after the meeting.
This comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia has no plans to invade southeastern Ukraine but the Kremlin will respect the result of the upcoming referendum in Ukraine's Crimea region.
Lavrov added that there was still no common vision with the West over Ukraine and that Russia needed no international structure to help it mediate with Kiev.
"We will respect the expression of the will of the Crimean people in in the upcoming referendum," Lavrov told reporters at a briefing at the residency of the Russian Ambassador to London.
"The Russian Federation does not and cannot have any plans to invade the southeastern regions of Ukraine," Lavrov said.
Crimea means more to Russia than the Falklands mean to Britain, Russia's Lavrov added.
Argentine forces invaded the Falklands in 1982, prompting Margaret Thatcher, then British prime minister, to dispatch a naval task force which retook them in a short but bloody war. Argentina has stepped up its calls for Britain to discuss the islands' sovereignty in recent years.
On another note, Germany's Bild newspaper reported that visa bans threatened by the European Union and United States should Crimea vote to join Russia in a referendum would target at least 13 Russian politicians and industry leaders including Vladimir Putin's close aides.
The visa ban list includes Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov, the secretary of the National Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, as well as several of Putin's advisors, Bild said in an advance copy of a report to be published on Saturday. The report cited diplomatic sources in Brussels and Washington.
Visa bans could also be slapped on the chief executive of Russian energy firm Gazprom Alexei Miller, and Igor Sechin, head of Russia's top crude oil producer Rosneft .
This as Russia said that clashes in which at least one person was killed in eastern Ukraine showed the Ukrainian authorities had lost control and that Moscow reserved the right to protect compatriots there.
"Russia is aware of its responsibility for the lives of compatriots and fellow citizens in Ukraine and reserves the right to take people under its protection," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Russian fighter jets and helicopters have started training flights over the Mediterranean Sea, a Russian navy spokesman was quoted as saying on Friday.
Spokesman Vadim Serga told Interfax news agency the Northern Fleet's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier was involved in the exercises, and the training included tactics for engaging aerial targets and other battle techniques.
He made no mention of Russia's standoff with Ukraine over the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, where Russian forces have taken control. The U.S. Navy has sent a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Truxtun, to the Black Sea on what it said was a routine deployment scheduled before the crisis in Ukraine.
Also on Friday, Russia accused the United States of "unacceptable" discrimination against Russian journalists by barring them from a news conference given by President Barack Obama and Ukraine's prime minister.
"It seems that in Washington, where they so love to talk about freedom of speech and journalists' rights, they are not ready to follow these principles themselves, preferring to deal only with 'approved' media propagating the 'required' information," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In turn, US President Barack Obama said he still hopes for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis heading into a pivotal weekend.
Obama, meeting Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in the Oval Office, reiterated to reporters that there would be consequences should Russia refuse to loosen its grip on the Crimea region of southern Russia.
Crimea's pro-Russia parliament has scheduled a referendum on Sunday to decide whether the region should be annexed by Russia.
"We continue to hope that a diplomatic solution can be found," Obama said.
On another note, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov was quoted as saying that a US-backed draft UN resolution that would declare Sunday's referendum on whether Ukraine's Crimea region should join Russia is "unacceptable".
"The main thing is that this draft resolution contains a call to reject the results of the referendum in Crimea. For this reason, naturally, such a resolution is unacceptable for us," Interfax quoted Gatilov as saying.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) must get approval from the leaders of any Ukrainian region where it plans to send a monitoring mission.
The ministry said in a statement that the Russian side had accepted the mandate to deploy a mission in Ukraine.
"As for the logistics of the mission, they naturally should be agreed with the leadership of Ukraine's regions where (the mission) is expected to be deployed," it added, in a clear reference to Ukraine's southern region of Crimea where pro-Russian leaders have taken control of government.
REUTERS