Germany believes that a referendum planned by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk next week would violate the constitution of the country and make the situation there even worse, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said on Monday. //
"Such a referendum, against the Ukrainian constitution, does not calm things down but escalates them," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told a news conference, adding that the people who had called the vote had no democratic legitimacy.