Ukraine ramps up peace talks with French, German envoys

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has held talks with top German and French diplomats in a push to end the uneasy stalemate in the former Soviet nation's 21-month pro-Russian separatist conflict.
French presidential envoy Jacques Audibert and his German counterpart Christoph Heusgen arrived in Kiev yesterday as part of a sudden upsurge in efforts to resolve one of Europe's deadliest crises since the 1990s Balkans wars.
US President Barack Obama and Russia's Vladimir Putin -- their relations nearing chills not witnessed since the end of the Cold War -- discussed the conflict during a rare but wide-ranging phone conversation on January 13.

Their senior aides met two days later in Russia's westernmost exclave to thrash out new pathways to end bloodshed that Kiev and its Western allies insist was provoked and backed by Moscow -- a charge the Kremlin denies.
Two different Ukrainian sources said Audibert and Heusgen met Poroshenko for the second time in two days on Tuesday after first flying to Moscow for a visit whose details have not been disclosed.
"Right now, all our partners are trying to understand how to end this stalemate because in reality, there has been no improvement," a high-ranking Ukrainian diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"This does not mean that they brought some sort of document for us to discuss," the diplomat added.

The Europeans separately met Ukrainian peace negotiators to gauge their commitment to an all-but-abandoned peace and political reconciliation agreement that Berlin and Paris helped Moscow and Kiev strike in February 2015.
The Ukrainian diplomat said the two envoys also visited "practically all" lawmakers to see whether they intended to pass a stalled Western-backed constitutional amendment granting special status to rebel-run parts of the eastern regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Kiev and the insurgents last week signed on to a new truce meant to quell violence that has claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people -- most of them civilians -- since April 2014.

Putin has repeatedly denied playing any direct role in a uprising that begun less than two months after the ouster of Ukraine's Kremlin-backed president over his refusal to establish closer ties with the European Union.
But the Russian president admitted for the first time last month that there were "people (in Ukraine) who work on resolving various issues there, including in the military sphere.