German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed dismay that the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk last February was not being respected and still had a way to go before being fully implemented.
"The ceasefire agreement hasn't been fully implemented and that's meant that there have been more and more victims," Merkel said in a news conference in Berlin with French President Francois Hollande and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko.
"The first and foremost condition is that everything is done to make the ceasefire agreement a reality. The task at hand means that what we agreed in Minsk has to be respected."