EU, Germany send new warnings to Russia over Ukraine

BRUSSELS – The caput of the European Union's enforcement committee warned Russia connected Wednesday that the bloc has a artillery of further sanctions acceptable if Moscow decides to invade neighboring Ukraine.

On the eve of an EU acme connected the issue, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that beyond scaling up and expanding existing sanctions, the EU tin follow "unprecedented measures with superior consequences for Russia.''

Von der Leyen told the European Parliament that determination are already economical sanctions successful spot targeting Russia’s finance, vigor and sectors due to the fact that of its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula successful 2014 and actions since that the West sees arsenic progressively aggressive.

She did not elaborate what signifier immoderate caller sanctions would take.

Germany's caller chancellor, Olaf Scholz, reinforced von der Leyen's connection Wednesday, telling the little location of the German parliament that “any usurpation of territorial integrity volition person its terms -- a precocious terms -- and we volition talk with 1 dependable connected this unneurotic with our European partners and our trans-Atlantic allies.”

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U.S. quality officials accidental Russia has moved 70,000 troops toward Ukraine’s borderline and is preparing for a imaginable penetration aboriginal adjacent year. Moscow denies it has immoderate plans to onslaught Ukraine and rejects Western concerns arsenic portion of a smear campaign.

In draught conclusions for Thursday's acme of EU leaders seen by The Associated Press, the 27 nations committedness that “any further subject aggression against Ukraine volition person monolithic consequences and terrible outgo successful response.”

The EU would coordinate immoderate sanctions bundle with the United States and Britain.

If immoderate nations spot an onslaught arsenic imminent, others, similar France and Germany, judge determination is inactive clip for diplomacy to work. Scholz called for talks connected the Ukraine-Russia tensions.

"We indispensable beryllium prepared often to effort to scope agreement, effort to interruption retired of the spiral of escalation,” Scholz told German lawmakers successful an code Wednesday.

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French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz volition person talks with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy successful Brussels aboriginal Wednesday.

In 2015, France and Germany brought Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating array and brokered a bid statement that helped extremity large-scale hostilities successful eastbound Ukraine, wherever Ukrainian forces person been warring Russia-backed separatists since 2014.

Scholz warned that much talks “must not beryllium misunderstood arsenic a caller German ‘Ostpolitik,’” referring to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s argumentation of détente toward the communist Eastern bloc successful the aboriginal 1970s.

There “can lone beryllium a European ‘Ostpolitik’ successful a agreed Europe” that is based connected principles of planetary instrumentality and bid that Russia committed itself to but violated with the annexation of Crimea, the chancellor said.

Efforts to scope a governmental colony to the separatist conflict, which has killed much than 14,000 radical successful 7 years, person failed. Sporadic skirmishes proceed on the tense enactment of contact. Russia truthful acold refuses to conscionable France and Germany for much bid talks connected the conflict.

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Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin.

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