Germany warns Russia of long-term damage

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Russia Thursday of "massive" long-term damage to its economic and political interests if it continued to violate international law with its seizure of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. In a speech to parliament looking ahead to a European Union summit next week in which the 28-member bloc could impose new sanctions against Moscow, Merkel said Russia was using the "failed" expansionist tactics of the 19th and 20th centuries. "If Russia continues its course of the last weeks, it would not only be a catastrophe for Ukraine," she told the chamber, where the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany was also a guest, according to AFP.