The German Chancellor openly disagrees with the chatter coming out of Washington and NATO that somehow supplying beefed up weapons to the Kiev government, in which this blog has scant confidence, would help to bring peace. It would stoke war and give Russia a pretext to fight it in the open with its own forces to defend the lives of its own ethnic Russians in the east of what is now no longer a viable unitary state. That is entirely the fault of Kiev and sooner or later it will have to face up to the consequences of its own actions.
No more can be said until we see whether the emerging peace deal has a chance, but meanwhile we very much hope Mrs. Merkel stands firm.