France and Germany have pushed the "Normandy format" to try to end the Ukraine crisis which has plunged ties with Moscow to Cold War lows, but Putin accuses Kiev of acting in bad faith.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said that "even if we can sense some reticence on the Russian side on the Normandy format ... We are determined to make the (Minsk) peace accords work. We are doing everything on our part to restart a fruitful dialogue."
However, a fresh ceasefire which has held since yesterday offered "a little glimmer of hope," Steinmeier said as he arrived for talks with his European Union peers in Bratislava.
The lull "will hopefully create the breathing space to talk constructively about the bigger things, where we are in dispute," he said.
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Fighting has picked up recently, stoking concerns that the Minsk accords could fail completely, leading to a wider conflict in the Soviet-era satellite which now sees its future with the West.
Putin is expected to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and his French counterpart Francois Hollande to discuss Ukraine on the sidelines of the G20 summit this weekend in China.
The conflict has claimed some 9,600 lives since early 2014, with more than two million people displaced.
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