German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone that Sunday’s planned elections in eastern Ukraine were illegitimate and would not be recognized by European leaders, a Berlin government spokesman said on Friday.
Merkel and Putin held a joint telephone conversation with French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Merkel’s spokesman Georg Streiter said at a government news conference.
He said in the call there were diverging opinions on Sunday’s “so-called elections” in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
“Merkel and Hollande underlined that there can only be a ballot in line with Ukrainian law,” he …read more
Source: Voice of America
