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US oil companies investing in Ukraine

Yuriy Boyko was Ukraine Energy Minister under ousted president Viktor Yanukovich, and now he's running for president. More importantly, though, he is still facilitating talks between the governments of Russia and Ukraine as well as high level executives of big U.S. and Western oil companies. He told CNBC's Dina Gusovsky that American companies have already shelled out or plan to invest a huge amount of money in Ukraine's oil and gas sector.

Mr Putin said Ukraine's government should defuse the political crisis by withdrawing its troops from southeastern regions and launching a broad constitutional reform process. He was quoted by the Kremlin as telling Ms Merkel that those steps were "the most important thing now" to resolve the crisis.

Ukraine's interim authorities introduced conscription on Thursday in the wake of launching an operation against the rebels last week, which has made little apparent progress.

Speaking in Kiev, Mr Yatseniuk said: "It's clear to me, President Putin has no limits. Putin's idea is to restore the might of the former Soviet Union and become emperor of a new-style Soviet empire." The West, he added, "got this message too late though after the Crimea invasion."

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He described the risk of broader Russian military intervention as high and described Ukraine's central government as falling into "a trap".

"On the one hand, the majority of Ukrainians are pressing on the acting president and security service to conduct the anti-terrorist operation and to bring these terrorists to justice. On the other hand, if you start this kind of very tough operation, you will definitely have civilian casualties. And this is the perfect excuse for President Putin to say look, these ultranationalists kill Russian-speaking people. We need to protect them," he said.

"The intel we got is very clear," he said. "Russia is entirely ready to cross the border as they did in Crimea."

Mr Yatseniuk insisted Kiev had not yet lost all authority over the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but said pro-Russians had taken control of "up to 10" cities. He said the central government still intended to hold a presidential election on May 25, and held out the prospect of a referendum on greater regional autonomy and Russian language rights.

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Ukraine PM warns of most dangerous 10 days