KIEV, Ukraine — European leaders are considering their toughest sanctions yet on Russian President Vladimir Putin as the U.S. says there’s evidence that Russia plans to supply rebels with heavy weapons including multiple rocket launchers.

With Ukraine and Russia trading accusations of shelling across each other’s borders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing European Union leaders to sign off on new sanctions next week. Merkel wants “to intensify the sanctions” and wants “quick decisions on this,” Georg Streiter, a German government spokesman, said yesterday. The Italian government, which chairs the EU Council, expects a deal on sanctions by next week, an EU official said.

“The shooting down of the airliner was a tipping point that’s changed the EU constellation,” Joerg Forbrig, senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., said in a phone interview. “Putin has crossed a line and misread the mood in European capitals to close ranks on new sanctions.”

On Saturday, Russia said that the United States bore some responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine though its backing for the Kiev government.
"The United States continues to push Kiev into the forceful repression of (Ukraine's) Russian-speaking population's discontent. There is one conclusion — the Obama administration has some responsibility both for the internal conflict in Ukraine and its severe consequences," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

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