They said Merkel told a meeting of the Christian Democratic parliamentary group on Tuesday that she would "rather today than tomorrow lift" the sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis and its annexation of the Crimea peninsula, as reported by Reuters.

However, a decision to lift the sanctions would have to be based on the facts on the ground, which were not yet in place in the areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists, the party officials reported her as saying.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Denmark's foreign minister Kristian Jensen said that Ukraine must uphold its part of a peace deal with Russia by modernizing the country or risk a collapse of support for EU sanctions against Moscow.