The U.S. National Security Agency's vast eavesdropping programs amassed more than 300 reports on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Der Spiegel reported Saturday, citing information leaked by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Merkel was on a list of some 122 heads of state and government about whom the NSA gathered intelligence in May 2009, the German weekly reported on its website.

The German government reached an agreement Thursday on liberalizing citizenship laws so that people born in Germany to foreign parents can hold two passports, the justice minister said.

The minister, Heiko Maas, said in a statement that he and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere had struck a deal on a draft law which would create a path to dual citizenship for thousands more people.

Germany said Wednesday that Ukraine's former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had crossed a line with leaked comments in which she is heard urging the "wiping out" of Russians.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said Ukraine's political leadership must reject "violent fantasies" and strive for stability and inclusion of minorities

Germany's foreign minister on Saturday denounced Russia's "attempt to splinter Europe" by staging a disputed independence referendum in Crimea that led to the Ukrainian peninsula's absorption by Russia.

"The referendum in Crimea... is a violation of international law and an attempt to splinter Europe," Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters in Kiev after meeting Ukraine's interim president Oleksandr Turchynov.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that the EU would target more figures with travel bans and assets freezes over the Ukraine crisis, and also warned of economic sanctions.

Merkel told parliament that Russia's absorption of Ukraine's Crimea region, which has been condemned as a violation of international law, demanded a "resolute and united" response by Europe and its partners.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he had told his Russian counterpart Wednesday that approval is needed immediately for a mandate sending foreign observers to Ukraine, as Berlin halted a major arms deal with Moscow.

"I said again this morning in the conversation that the mandate really needs to go through in the next 24 hours," Steinmeier told reporters after telephone talks with Sergei Lavrov and the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Didier Burkhalter.

Britain warned Tuesday that the West and Russia faced a changed relationship in the coming years, as London suspended all bilateral military cooperation and halted arms exports to Russia.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said President Vladimir Putin had chosen the "route of isolation" by signing a treaty annexing Crimea just two days after a hastily arranged referendum on the breakaway peninsula.

Dozens of Greenpeace activists sneaked into a nuclear power plant in eastern France at dawn Tuesday in the latest break-in by the environmental group to highlight alleged security weaknesses at atomic facilities.

The activists broke into the Fessenheim plant and hung a banner reading "Stop risking Europe" on the side of one of its reactors "to denounce the risk of French nuclear power for the whole of Europe," the group said in a statement.

Ukraine's defense minister said Sunday that Russia had agreed to temporarily lift its blockade of Ukraine's military bases in Crimea in order to ease tensions surrounding the peninsula's secession referendum, as Moscow said it would respect the “choice” of the flashpoint region's residents.

"Agreements have already been reached between our commanders... on there being no attempts to blockade our military installations until March 21," Interfax quoted Defense Minister Igor Tenyukh as saying.

Latvia's environment minister is being sacked for planning to take part in a march by veterans who sided with the Nazis against the Soviets in World War II, the prime minister's office said Friday.

"No minister has ever attended this event, so it is important the dismissal happens before it takes place, not afterwards," Andis Blinds, spokesman of Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma, told AFP.