German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in parliament on Wednesday that Germany would support the extension of sanctions against Russia at the upcoming EU summit.

The next meeting of the diplomatic advisers to the leaders of the so-called Normandy Four group, which includes Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, will hold their next meeting on the situation in the Sea of Azov in January, a spokesman for the German cabinet said Wednesday.

Norbert Rottgen, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the German federal parliament, called on Berlin to reconsider its position on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which he said had "strong geopolitical" overtones.

Moscow disagrees with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's claim that the recent Kerch Strait incident, during which three Ukrainian ships illegally crossed Russian territorial waters, was war, as Moscow qualifies the incident as a Kiev's provocation staged ahead of the election campaign in the country, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

Ukraine's Naftogaz energy company seeks to involve US courts in legal dispute with Russia's Gazprom energy giant to make the latter pay $2.6 billion in compensation as part of a settlement of the dispute over gas supplies, media reported on Wednesday.