Ukraine on the brink

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande met Russian leader Vladimir Putin yesterday in a frantic bid to avoid a further escalation of violence in east Ukraine.

Ahead of the Moscow talks, Merkel played down hopes of a rapid end to surging fighting as she and Hollande try to convince Putin to sign up to a peace plan to stop the conflict.

"We know that it is completely open as to whether we'll succeed in achieving a ceasefire through these talks," Merkel told reporters in Berlin before taking the surprise initiative to Putin.

Merkel and Hollande flew first to Kiev on Thursday, hoping for a quick halt to the bloodshed and to revive a widely flouted truce accord agreed in Minsk last September.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the biggest push yet to resolve the 10-month conflict raised "hope for a ceasefire".

Putin and the unsmiling European duo held the closed-door talks around a small round table in an ornate hall in the Kremlin with the media only allowed in briefly and no comments made.

The tense visit is the first to Moscow for Merkel since the start of the Ukraine crisis while Hollande made a brief stopover there in December.

As fears have soared of an escalation in the conflict and concern over possible divisions between the United States and Europe on whether to supply arms to Kiev, US Vice President Joe Biden said Ukraine was battling for survival in the face of escalating Russian military involvement.

"We, the US and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment," Biden said in Brussels. "Russia cannot be allowed to redraw the map of Europe."

European Union officials said Thursday that the bloc will blacklist more Russian individuals over Ukraine, and it is hoped that the possibility that broader sanctions could be toughened up will encourage Russia to agree to a peace deal.

The high-level European shuttle diplomacy to end the worst East-West crisis since the end of the Cold War came as US Secretary of State John Kerry also visited Kiev on Thursday and Washington mulled whether to supply arms to the Ukraine army.

As pressure grows for a peaceful resolution to the conflict that has killed over 5,300 people, rebel and Ukrainian forces on the ground agreed a ceasefire for several hours around the battleground town of Debaltseve to allow civilians to leave, both sides said.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed over recent weeks in east Ukraine as fighting spiralled after insurgents ignored an earlier truce deal and pushed into government-held territory.

No confirmed details have emerged of what exactly the new European peace proposal contains and there is much disquiet in Kiev after the collapse of the previous peace deal.