Germany is Prepared for Long-Term Dispute With Russia Over Ukraine

German Chancellor Angela Merkel signaled she’s ready for a long confrontation with President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine as her foreign minister said the two countries’ relations must be “remapped.”

As government forces and pro-Russian separatists battle in Ukraine’s east, Germany’s goal is keeping the former Soviet republic sovereign and whole, Merkel said in a speech to parliament in Berlin yesterday. Russia’s actions threaten “the peaceful international order and breach international law” and the European Union needs unity to confront it, she said.

“We need patience and staying power to overcome the crisis,” she said to applause from lower-house lawmakers. Economic sanctions on Russia “remain unavoidable” as a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine fails to hold, she said.

Merkel, who has emerged as Europe’s main conduit to Putin in the Ukraine crisis, used some of the strongest language yet to hint at her exasperation, as she retraced attempts by world leaders to reach out to the Russian president during a year of escalating conflict.

Germany was “sparing no effort” to try to reach a diplomatic solution, she said. The EU’s biggest economy has also taken into account Russian concerns about the impact of Ukraine’s free-trade deal with the bloc. Ukrainian former President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned a plan to sign the agreement, triggering the crisis that preceded Putin’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March.

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