Germany has warned that Russia might try to spread its "sphere of influence" to the Western Balkans, while seeking new ways to make peace on Ukraine, reports GHN based on EUobserver.
"Who would have thought it possible that 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War and the division of the world into two blocs, that such a thing could happen in the middle of Europe: old thinking about spheres of influence, which runs roughshod over international law?" German chancellor Angela Merkel told an audience at the Lowy Institution for International Policy, a think tank in Brisbane, on Sunday (16 November).
Such an approach, she said, puts the "entire European peace order into question".
She warned Russian leader Vladimir Putin that the EU will not bow to Moscow the same way that former Eastern Germany used to, while making reference to further EU expansion.
"Otherwise you would have to say: ‘We're too weak. We can't take anyone else on board. We will ask Moscow first if that is possible'. That's how it was for 40 years and I don't want to go back to that".
"It's not just about Ukraine. It's about Moldova, about Georgia - if it continues likes this, we would have to ask about Serbia; we would have to ask about the Western Balkan states," she added at the Lowy event, according toGerman news agency DPA.
She noted that if the majority of Ukrainians had wanted to join Russia's economic bloc - the Eurasian Union - instead of seeking EU integration then the West would not have started making "noise" on the Polish-Ukrainian border.
But she ruled out European military support for Ukraine, saying: "It would lead to military confrontation with Russia, which would certainly not be local".
"We have to leave no stone unturned to get into talks with Russia on a diplomatic solution to the [Ukraine] conflict".