WHITFIELD: New developments on the crisis in Ukraine. President Obama has been on a series of phone calls with European leaders this morning according to the White House. Erin McPike is live for us now in Washington. So, Erin, what do you know about these calls?</s>ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, what we do know is the president is vacationing with his family right now in Key Largo, but he is staying on top of the situation in Ukraine and he called this morning British Prime Minister David Cameron as well as the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the French President Francois Hollande. Now the White House plans to issue a read out of these calls later in the afternoon, but what we do know is that U.S. leaders are looking for the support of the European Union in the event that they do need to press forward with sanctions against Russia. Now, on top of that, the president also held a conference call with the presidents of the three Baltic states, the president of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Now this is important because the leaders of all of those Baltic states are concerned that -- the Baltic states, of course, border Russia, so they're concerned about the activity there. We do know that the United States has six F-15 fighter jets in Lithuania right now for NATO Air Policing exercises and there's also been some discussion of sending troops and F-16 fighter jets to Poland. More on that, obviously, but the White House once they do give us the read out of those calls, we will bring it to you -- Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: And what else is potentially next?</s>MCPIKE: Well, again, the White House is going to be releasing the read out of these calls later this afternoon. So we don't know yet what the next steps are. What we do know is that diplomatic talks right now haven't really yielded results so that's why they're looking at a variety of options.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks so much, Erin McPike at the White House. All right. A former world chess champion is now an outspoken critic of Russia's Vladimir Putin. Has Ukraine become his new pawn? Garry Kasparov joins us next.
Obama Names Key Calls Today on Ukraine