Merkel says further economic sanctions against Russia not planned

PanARMENIAN.Net - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said further economic sanctions against Russia are not planned over its actions in eastern Ukraine, BBC News reports.

EU foreign ministers are to discuss sanctions next week and monitors say a ceasefire between pro-Russian militias and Ukrainian forces risks unravelling.

But Merkel said that while the ceasefire was not being respected the focus was on securing a real truce.

Further measures have since been added since, targeting senior Russian officials, as well as Russia's oil industry, defense firms and banks.

Western governments and the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev have accused Russia of supplying the armed groups in eastern Ukraine with heavy weapons and soldiers, a claim denied by the government in Moscow.

Russia's envoy to Brussels, Vladimir Chizov, said on Tuesday, Nov 11, that EU was "close to exhausting its sanctions potential, both in terms of political will and of its own economic opportunities".

He told Tass news agency that the 28-member bloc needed a consensus to either cancel the sanctions or introduce new ones, and he could not see a consensus to cancel them.

The German chancellor, while maintaining her backing for EU travel bans on pro-Russian separatists, indicated that further measures were off the table in favor of "focusing on the winter and the humanitarian situation [in Ukraine] and how to get a real ceasefire".

A truce deal, signed in Minsk on Sept 5, has been violated by both sides and a rebel spokesman in the city of Luhansk told the BBC on Tuesday that there had been fighting in several areas about 20km (12 miles) to the north, west and south of the city.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe warned of a real "risk of further escalation".

The OSCE monitoring team said it had seen a convoy of 43 unmarked, green, military lorries heading towards the center of the rebel-held stronghold Donetsk. Five of the lorries were towing 120mm artillery pieces while another five were towing multi-launch rocket systems.

More than 4,000 people have been killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine since April, including hundreds of fatalities since the ceasefire began.