DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, on Friday warned the West against trying to topple President Vladimir Putin and said that Russians are ready to sacrifice their wealth in Putin's support.

Russia has for the past year been sliding into recession amid a slump in its energy export prices as well as Western sanctions against Moscow's role in the conflict in Ukraine that has claimed more than 5,000 lives. Questions have been raised in Russia and abroad whether the price that ordinary Russians are having to pay for the annexation of Crimea is too high.

Shuvalov, who is believed to be one of the richest men in the government, said that what he considers the West's attempts to oust Putin will only unite the nation further.

"When a Russian feels any foreign pressure, he will never give up his leader," Shuvalov said. "Never. We will survive any hardship in the country — eat less food, use less electricity."

Shuvalov's comments triggered pithy remarks on Russia social media including an opposition activist who posted photos of Shuvalov's Moscow, London and Austria homes to illustrate where the deputy prime minister would experience the hardships he described.

At the same panel in Davos, Putin's long-time ally and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said that Putin clearly thinks that Russia's foreign policy interests at this point are worth the price the nation pays in higher inflation and the collapse of the Russian ruble.

Shuvalov, who worked with Kudrin until he resigned from the government in 2011, defended Russia's foreign policy but warned that Russia is "going into a longer crisis" compared with 2008, when it was battered for about two years by the global crisis.

Shuvalov said Russia should focus on cushioning the economic fall through reforms and supporting the financial system. "It is going to get worse and the anti-crisis plan should be aimed at adapting to the hard landing," he said.

Russia's foreign currency reserves shrank by 2 percent last week alone to $379 billion as the Central Bank sold foreign currency in a bid to prop up the ruble.

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Vasilyeva contributed to this report from Moscow.

CBS-Denver
Shannon Conley Awaits Sentencing

DENVER (AP) — A 19-year-old suburban Denver woman who tried to go to Syria to help Islamic State militants was sentenced to four years in prison Friday, even as she tearfully told a judge that she never wanted to hurt anyone and has disavowed jihad.

Shannon Conley told the judge she was misled while pursuing Islam and learned only after her arrest about atrocities committed by the extremists she was taught to respect.

"I am glad I have learned of their true identity here and not on the front lines," said Conley, whose black and tan headscarf clashed against her striped jail uniform. "I disavow these radical views I've come to know and I now believe in the true Islam in which peace is encouraged."

But U.S. District Judge Raymond P. Moore said he doubted Conley's views had changed, and she needs psychological help. He also sentenced her to three years of supervised release and 100 hours of community service and barred her from possessing black powder used in explosives, saying, "I'm not going to take a chance with you."

"I don't know what has been crystalized in your mind," Moore told her, adding that he hoped the sentence would discourage others with similar intentions. "I'm still not sure you get it."

The three-hour hearing offered the fullest picture to date of Conley, who pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Prosecutors sought the four-year sentence, rather than the maximum penalty of five years, because was helpful and cooperative in ongoing investigations.

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Colorado teen Shannon Conley is the latest American to admit attempt to join Middle East terrorists. …

Conley was arrested in April as she boarded a plane she hoped would ultimately get her to Syria, where wanted to marry a suitor she met online who told her he was fighting with the extremists. She told FBI agents she wanted to fight alongside him or use her skills as a certified nurse's aide to help.

FBI agents became aware of her interest in jihad in late 2013, after she started talking about terrorism with members of a suburban Denver church. They met repeatedly with over several months, hoping to dissuade her. But she told them she was intent on waging jihad, even though she knew it was illegal.

"Even though I was committed to the idea of jihad, I didn't want to hurt anyone," Conley said Friday. "It was all about defending Muslims."

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Holloway also said Conley continues to defy authority, making vitriolic comments about law enforcement even though authorities showed restraint in their handling of her case. That's a troubling sign that she may reoffend, Holloway said.

Moore described her as an isolated high school dropout with almost no friends her own age and a strange obsession with the military. In jail, she met with an imam who came to counsel her about faith and left disturbed that she preferred to discuss jihad, Moore said.

And even before she was arrested, Moore said she was insolent and desperate for attention, wearing a T-shirt that read "Sniper. Don't run, you'll die trying" on her first meeting with FBI agents.

"I'm not saying her actions were a direct product of mental illness, but she's a bit of a mess," Moore said. "She's pathologically naive."

Her case came as U.S. officials are putting new energy into trying to understand what radicalizes people far removed from the fight and trying to prod countries to do a better job of keeping them from joining up.

Federal defender Robert Pepin said Conley had grown, even changing her name as a show of her transformation. A lighter sentence would have shown others with similar intentions that "we really want them to be part of us again. That we are a beacon and not a sword."

Instead, blaming the upsurge in violence on the Ukrainians and the rise in civilian deaths on “those who issue such criminal orders,” as he did on Friday in Moscow, Mr. Putin is apparently doubling down, rather than backing down, in a conflict that is now the bloodiest in Europe since the Balkan wars.

With the appearance in recent weeks of what NATO calls sophisticated Russian weapons systems, newly emboldened separatist leaders have abandoned all talk of a cease-fire. One of the top leaders of the Russian-backed rebels said Friday that his soldiers were “on the offensive” in several sectors, capitalizing on their capture of the Donetsk airport the day before.

“We will attack” until the Ukrainian Army is driven from the border of the Donetsk region, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic rebel group, said in comments carried by Russian news agencies.

“On our side, we won’t make an effort to talk about a cease-fire,” Mr. Zakharchenko said. “Now we’re going to watch how Kiev reacts. Kiev doesn’t understand that we can attack in three directions at once.”

For long-suffering residents of Donetsk, who have lived with constant shelling, chronic electricity failures and, since September, a cutoff of pensions and other government support payments from Kiev, the resumption of military action came as little surprise.

“It was pure illusion that peace could be achieved now,” said Enrique Menendez, a former advertising agency owner who now runs a humanitarian relief operation in eastern Ukraine. “None of the sides has yet achieved its goals. The only real surprise is that the fighting started in the winter instead of the spring.”

While the separatist forces now seem ascendant, analysts have little doubt that their fortunes are tied to the level of support provided by Moscow. In August, on the verge of defeat, they were rescued by an all-out Russian incursion that turned the tide on the battlefield and drove Kiev to the bargaining table. The same dynamics appear to be at work now, Ukraine and NATO say, with Russian troops in unmarked uniforms apparently joining the separatists in the assaults on Ukrainian positions.

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While Moscow denies any role in the fighting, Sergei A. Markov, a political analyst close to the Kremlin, says it is not surprising that Mr. Putin has continued to support the rebellious republics of southeast Ukraine even in the face of economic pressure from the West. In fact, the intensity of the standoff, he said, has undermined the influence of Mr. Putin’s liberal economic advisers in government, rendering their voices almost mute in debates over Ukraine.

Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, echoed that point. “The influence of economists as a whole has completely vanished,” Mr. Sonin said of the Kremlin. “The country is on a holy mission. It’s at war with the United States, so why would you bother about the small battleground, the economy?”

Mr. Putin is said to watch his approval ratings closely, and they have risen to great heights recently with the annexation of Crimea and the tensions with the West over eastern Ukraine. In this respect, said Igor Shuvalov, a first deputy prime minister of Russia, continued fighting in Ukraine may actually help to solidify Mr. Putin politically at a time of deteriorating economic conditions.

“When a Russian feels any foreign pressure, he will never give up his leader,” Mr. Shuvalov said Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We will survive any hardship in the country, eat less food, use less electricity.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Markov said, the stresses of juggling a war and the deepening economic crisis in Russia have left Mr. Putin noticeably preoccupied,

“We have much less time than before,” he said of a recent meeting between experts and Mr. Putin in which he participated. “It was clear to me that the thoughts of Mr. Putin were somewhere else, but not in our room.”

The slow grind of combat in southeastern Ukraine that began in April has now killed at least 5,086 soldiers and civilians, the United Nations reported on Friday. The world body bases its estimate on official morgue and hospital reports, and analysts believe that it understates the total death toll. The report said that 262 of the deaths occurred in the past nine days, making that period the deadliest since the September cease-fire.

Signs of the new belligerence were evident across eastern Ukraine on Friday.

Indeed, fighting has also flared beyond Donetsk, including a road and rail hub northeast of the city, as well as a strategic checkpoint near Luhansk, the other main rebel stronghold. Rebel commanders claimed on Friday to have captured the village of Krasny Partizan, north of Donetsk, which would be another setback for government forces.

In another worrisome sign, the rebels were not the only ones taking a more aggressive tone.

Speaking to security officials in Kiev after the loss of Donetsk airport, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine expressed frustration with the broken peace process.

Ukraine Crisis in Maps

Any major offensive by either side would clearly be a repudiation of the cease-fire signed on Sept. 5 and endorsed by the group’s main sponsor, Russia. That agreement, always shaky, began to break down several weeks ago. It had set the de facto borders of the rebel republic to encompass about one-third of the Donetsk region of Ukraine.

Mr. Zakharchenko has threatened to expand his territory before, but his warnings have not typically prompted much alarm. Now, with the war raging and his troops on the march, more attention is being paid.

As recently as a few weeks ago, peace seemed to be slowly seeping into the blood-soaked fields of eastern Ukraine. Russia seemed occupied with the drop in oil prices and the ruble’s collapse. The shaky cease-fire was holding. Language on both sides was noticeably more conciliatory.

That all seems a long time ago now on the war-rattled streets of Donetsk, where a main hospital was hit by a shell this week.

If one were to ask the remaining residents of Donetsk, even those who have been loyal to the Kiev government, whether they supported this new rebel advance, they would say yes, Mr. Menendez said — and not necessarily for political reasons.

“They just want to push the front lines out of the city,” he said, “to stop the shelling on them.”

David M. Herszenhorn and Andrew Roth contributed reporting from Moscow, and Alison Smale from Davos, Switzerland

Brussels (AFP) - The European Union called Friday on Moscow to "assume its responsibility" in ending the separatist war in Ukraine.

"Time is running out in eastern Ukraine where the escalation of fighting has caused far too many civilian as well as military casualties," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement.

Mogherini said the deaths of eight civilians in the shelling of a bus in rebel-held Donetsk illustrated the urgency of halting the violence.

Hours before her statement, the pro-Russian separatists announced they would follow up their capture of Donetsk's ruined international airport from Ukrainian government forces with a wider offensive to win more territory.

"Those responsible for the recent escalation must now show that they are serious about their commitment to a political settlement," Mogherini said, calling for withdrawal of heavy weapons from the frontlines.

"We call notably on Russia to fully assume its responsibility. Public statements distorting the reality on the ground, inciting to hatred and further violence will not lead to the badly needed de-escalation," she said.

Russia denies arming or fighting alongside the rebels in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian and Western governments say Moscow backs the rebels with direct military aid, an accusation supported by multiple sightings of sophisticated Russian-issue military hardware, usually unmarked.

Mogherini called for implementation of the September Minsk accord that ordered withdrawal of heavy weapons and a truce. She also lashed out at the parading of wounded Ukrainian prisoners in Donetsk as a violation of humanitarian law.

She did not, however, mention the future of current EU sanctions imposed against Russia over its policies in eastern Ukraine and earlier annexation of the country's Crimea province.