The leaders of Germany and France are launching a fresh bid to resolve Ukraine's escalating crisis, with surprise visits to Kiev today and Moscow tomorrow.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and president Francois Hollande will later today meet Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who is already scheduled to hold talks with visiting US secretary of state John Kerry.
“Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative,” Mr Hollande said this morning.
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“We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”
“For several days Angela Merkel and I have worked on a text…a text that can be acceptable to all,” Mr Hollande said.
Underlining the danger of fighting between government troops and Russian-backed separatists that has killed more than 5,350 people and displaced more than one million, Mr Hollande added: "Now we are in a war, and in a war that could be a total war…Peace is under threat at the borders of Europe. "
Debate is intensifying in the United States over whether to arm Ukraine in its battle with insurgents who receive heavy weapons from Russia.
While some Nato states in Europe have suggested they may sell weapons to Kiev, Germany and France have rejected such a move.
“There is another option, it is not certain it will succeed but if we don’t try we will never know,” Mr Hollande said.
“That is the option of diplomacy, negotiation (but) that cannot go on indefinitely.”
The EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the bloc "supports all the initiatives aimed at bringing political solution to the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine; the efforts of chancellor Angela Merkel and president Francois Hollande, and the visits to Kiev and Moscow they just announced, are clearly going in this direction," she said.
"The European Union is united in using all the means available to push for a political solution, by applying pressure as well as continuing dialogue," she added, in after EU member states lengthened a sanctions list of Russians and pro-Moscow Ukrainians and related entities.
In Moscow, the foreign ministry warned Washington against arming Ukraine, while president Vladimir Putin's main foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov called tomorrow's visit by the German and French leaders "a positive step".