German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend put forward the idea of creating a common economic zone between the EU and Russia “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” and a gradual rapprochement between Moscow and Brussels. Speaking at the Christian Democratic Union’s Congress in Mecklenburg, she also repeated her readiness “to put an immediate end to sanctions against Russia” once Moscow met its obligations under the Minsk agreements calling the hostilities in eastern Ukraine “a civil war supported by Russia.”
Source: welt