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Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned against imposing more sanctions on Russia in an interview that was published on Friday, saying bringing Russia to its knees would not make Europe safer. “I can only warn against it,” Steinmeier told Der Spiegel. The diplomat pointed out that Russia is already paying the price for invading Ukraine in the form of falling oil prices and a collapsing currency. He argued, “It cannot be in our interest that this spirals out of control.”

Earlier in the week, German chancellor Angela Merkel, whose conservatives are the senior partners in the ruling coalition with Steinmeier’s Social Democratic Party, insisted the sanctions would not be weakened. Speaking to lawmakers in Berlin ahead of a meeting with other European leaders in Brussels, Merkel said the territorial integrity of Ukraine had to be restored. “As long as this goal is not achieved, the sanctions will stay,” she said. European Union leaders agreed on Friday to keep existing sanctions in place and said they were ready to “stay the course” if Russia did not pull back from Ukraine.