Chancellor Merkel used her speech on Saturday to the annual Security Conference to criticize Russia for its annexation of Crimea last March, as well as its alleged role in the ongoing fighting between pro-Russia separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.

Speaking just hours after she returned to Germany from talks with French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Merkel said resolving the crisis in eastern Ukraine required the cooperation of the Kremlin.

"Russia needs to do its bit in the Ukrainian crisis. This crisis cannot be resolved by military means," she said.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is also attending the conference, told reporters that he believed the peace initiative presented by Merkel and Hollande could work.

Prospects of success unclear

The chancellor, though, appeared less optimistic.

"After the talks yesterday in Moscow that the French president and I had, it is uncertain if it will succeed," she said.

"But it is in my view and the French president's view definitely worth trying. We owe it to the people affected in Ukraine, at the very least," the chancellor said.

Merkel also stressed that nobody had any interest in a division of Europe.

"We want to forge security in Europe together with Russia, not against Russia."

Four hours in Moscow

This was the chancellor's first direct comment on her more than four-hour-long meeting with Hollande and Putin on Friday.

Shortly after the talks, however, a French presidential source described the meeting as having been "substantial and constructive," adding that leaders were working on a joint text incorporating proposals from both Putin and Poroshenko.

The chancellor's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, confirmed that "on the basis of a proposal by Germany's chancellor and France's president, a possible joint document to implement the Minsk agreement will now be worked on."

He was referring to a September ceasefire agreement agreed in talks in the Belarusian capital last September, which has failed to stop 10 months of fighting in eastern Ukraine.

pfd/sms (Reuters, dpa)