The leaders of Russia and Germany squared off over Ukraine from opposite sides of the globe, with Vladimir Putin warning that Moscow will not accept a defeat for the pro-Russian rebels and Angela Merkel accusing the Kremlin of undermining peace across Europe.
But despite the harsh rhetoric, European Union foreign ministers refrained from increasing the sanctions against Moscow, voicing support for a floundering peace deal in eastern Ukraine that has been undermined by continuing hostilities.
At least 10 people were killed and 17 others wounded in the latest fighting, authorities reported Monday.
In an interview with German ARD television broadcast late Sunday, Putin said he still believes in the success of peace efforts in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels have been battling Kiev’s troops in a conflict that has claimed more than 4,000 lives.
Merkel, the German chancellor, spoke Monday in Sydney after the G-20 summit, which Putin left early after receiving a chilly response from Western leaders. In unequivocal terms, she said Russia’s annexation of Crimea had raised the threat of more conflicts in Europe.
“Who would have thought that, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the end of the Cold War and the end of the world’s separation into two blocks, something like this could have happened in the middle of Europe?” Merkel said. “Old ways of thinking in spheres of influence, which spurn international law, must not become accepted.”
The German leader warned that regional conflicts like the one still raging in eastern Ukraine “can very quickly broaden to major fires.”
“It’s not only about Ukraine. It’s about Moldova, it’s about Georgia, if it continues like this ... one has to wonder about Serbia, one has to wonder about the countries in the western Balkans,” Merkel said.
Merkel insisted that European Union and US sanctions against Russia would remain in place “as far and long as they are needed.”
‘The new cold war’
Vladimir Putin has suggested to a German interviewer that the west is provoking Russia into a new cold war. The airing of the interview, which was recorded by the German channel ARD in Vladivostok last week, followed Russia’s tit-for-tat expulsions of German and Polish diplomats, as well as the deportation of a Latvian accused of spying.
Asked whether the accusatory rhetoric between Moscow and Washington and a noticeable increase in Russian displays of military strength near western countries points to a new cold war, Putin said two rounds of Nato expansion in central and eastern Europe had been “significant geopolitical game changers” that forced Russia to respond.
Moscow resumed strategic aviation flights abroad several years ago in response to US nuclear bomber flights to areas near Russia that had continued after the cold war, he added.
“Nato and the United States have military bases scattered all over the globe, including in areas close to our borders, and their number is growing,” Putin said. “Moreover, just recently it was decided to deploy special operations forces, again in close proximity to our borders. You have mentioned various [Russian] exercises, flights, ship movements and so on. Is all of this going on? Yes, it is indeed.”
Putin has previously been accused by western leaders of fanning cold war-style tensions, most recently by the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, who said he told Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing last week that Russia should stop “trying to recreate the lost glories of tsarism or the old Soviet Union.” In August, Barack Obama told the late-night talk show host Jay Leno that the Russians often “slip back into cold war thinking.”
During the ARD interview, Putin dodged a question about whether Moscow had supplied weapons to the separatists and deployed troops to eastern Ukraine, as Nato and Kiev have argued. “Nowadays people who wage a fight and consider it righteous will always get weapons,” he said, blaming the west for supporting the government forces’ use of ballistic missiles.
“You want the Ukrainian central authorities to annihilate everyone there in eastern Ukraine,” Putin said. “Is that what you want? We certainly don’t. And we won’t let it happen.”
But a report on the weapons used in the Ukrainian conflict released on Monday by the consulting group Armament Research Services (ARES) suggested that rebels were “very likely” to have received arms from Russia “however the level of state complicity in such activity remains unclear.”
Putin also said Russia’s “friendship” with Germany was stronger than ever. German business groups have been among the most adamant opponents of sanctions. But in a sign of slipping political relations, Russia’s foreign ministry confirmed to the news agency RIA Novosti on Monday that it had expelled an employee of the German embassy in Moscow in response to Berlin’s “unfriendly actions toward an employee of one of Russia’s foreign institutions in Germany.” A Russian diplomat in Bonn had previously been expelled on suspicion of spying, Der Spiegel reported.
