MOSCOW: European leaders rebuffed calls from Ukraine for greater support against Russia on Thursday, after Kiev urged Nato to send ships into waters disputed with Moscow.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Kiev to be “sensible” following the request from President Petro Poroshenko, just hours after the European Union failed to agree to threaten new sanctions against Moscow.
Blaming Russia for the tensions, Merkel said: “We ask the Ukrainian side too to be sensible because we know that we can only solve things through being reasonable and through dialogue because there is no military solution to these disputes”.
Ukraine is not a Nato member but has established close ties with the US-led military alliance, especially since the 2014 Crimea annexation.
Merkel, speaking at a German-Ukrainian business forum, said she would discuss the conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a G20 summit in Argentina this weekend.
She said a bridge from the Russian mainland to Crimea that Putin opened in May had already restricted shipping access to the Sea of Azov and therefore to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol.
“The full blame for this goes to the Russian president,” she said.
“Now what I want is that the facts of what happened are put on the table, that the (crew) are released, and that no confessions are coerced like we have seen on television.”
“I would also support keeping things calm, but we must also ensure that a city like Mariupol that relies on access to the sea... is not simply cut off so that large parts of Ukraine can no longer be easily reached.” — AFP
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