Vladimir Putin is to hear proposals for possible peace in Ukraine from the French and German leaders. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov//AFP/Getty Images
Angela Merkel and François Hollande are to meet Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible peace plan for Ukraine, as fears rise that failure to secure a breakthrough could trigger an escalation in a conflict that has already cost more than 5,000 lives.
Before leaving for Moscow, the French president said securing a ceasefire for eastern Ukraine was just a first step and that a “comprehensive agreement” must be sought.
Before leaving for Moscow, the French president said securing a ceasefire for eastern Ukraine was just a first step and that a “comprehensive agreement” must be sought.
On Thursday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said Washington was weighing up whether to supply arms to the Ukrainian government.
Hollande and Merkel were expected to hold talks with Putin at 5pm Moscow time (2pm GMT), though there was significant uncertainty over what ideas they were bringing to the table. They undertook the hasty and unusual mission after Putin put forward his own plan and they responded with counter-proposals, amid an upsurge of fighting and growing European fears that a US decision to supply arms to Kiev could trigger an uncontrollable rise in violence.
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Merkel and Hollande met the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in Kiev on Thursday evening.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, said on Twitter that the leaders had discussed “steps so that the Minsk agreement can start working”. A ceasefire signed in Minsk in September froze the frontlines at their positions at the time, but never held.
Kerry sounded lukewarm about Merkel and Hollande’s visit. He said Putin had sent “a couple of ideas” to France and Germany, and the pair had come up with a response but he did not give details. Kerry also said the US wanted a diplomatic solution but was reviewing all options, including “the possibility of providing defensive systems to Ukraine”.
US officials are concerned that Putin will use European eagerness to stop the fighting to consolidate his hold on Crimea and eastern Ukraine and shrug off the obligations Russia undertook in Minsk to cut off the flow of arms and manpower to the pro-Moscow separatists.
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Hollande, however, has insisted that the Franco-German proposals were based on a guarantee of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. He warned “the diplomatic option cannot be extended indefinitely”.
The chances of a breakthrough hinge on establishing a durable ceasefire and the prospect of that looked slim, according to senior officials and diplomats briefed on the initiative in Brussels.
Putin was said to be refusing to negotiate with Poroshenko, after making fresh proposals to Kiev 48 hours ago. While senior officials in Brussels said the “new initiatives” in the “Putin plan” were worth exploring, the little that was known suggested they would be very hard for Kiev to swallow.
Putin wants to redraw the “demarcation line” showing pro-Russian rebel-held territory, expanding it by around 500 sq km from that agreed last September in Minsk. Merkel has always insisted that the Minsk deal is the only basis for a settlement. While seizing a bigger chunk of eastern Ukraine, Putin also insisted that the “autonomous” areas beyond the control of the Ukrainian government nevertheless continue to benefit from central government budget funding.
This would mean that Kiev was paying for the partition of the country and financing what would probably become a frozen conflict perpetuating Russian and separatist control of the region.
“Putin wants to create a fait accompli and create a new demarcation line,” said a senior diplomat.
A senior official involved in the talks said that Putin’s offer was pointless and would not be accepted. But three senior figures in Brussels said that changes could be made to the Minsk accords depending on what Putin offered in return.
Merkel and Hollande were expected to warn Putin that in the absence of any diplomatic breakthrough, the pressure to supply arms to the Ukrainians could become irresistible and that talk of eventual admission of Ukraine to Nato would move up the agenda.
The Europeans are almost unanimously opposed to arming the Ukrainians, although Lithuania is already making deliveries.
“If we prepare the other side for war, there will be a war and Putin will win that war. That’s the majority view in Europe,” said the diplomat.
Ahead of a major international security conference in Munich on Friday, Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat who runs the meeting, warned that the Merkel-Hollande gambit was “probably a last chance”.
A senior British army officer has urged the British government to support the establishment of a conventional deterrent against Russian forces.
Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, who was the leading British commander in Nato until last March, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that a strong message needed to be sent to the Russian president, if mainland Europe was to avoid “total war”.
“Unless Nato speaks from a position of strength, we are gifting the advantage to Mr Putin,” Shirreff said. “Wars start as a result of weakness, not of strength. That dynamic once started gets worse if there is a sense of weakness on one side.”
Pro-Russia rebels and the Ukrainian authorities agreed on Friday to create a humanitarian corridor to remove civilians from the heart of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. Rebel leaders said they reached agreement with Ukrainian authorities to allow the evacuation of civilians from Debaltseve, a railway hub that has become the main target of a rebel offensive because of its strategic location. It was not immediately clear where the evacuees would go.
The ceasefire around Debaltseve held on Friday, as a convoy of several dozen buses drove from nearby Vuhelhirsk toward Debaltseve, where a shrinking population has been trapped in the crossfire and left without power, heating and running water for almost two weeks.
Zorian Shkiryak, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said on Facebook that “the green corridor has been confirmed”. Eduard Basurin, a rebel spokesman in Donetsk, said about 1,000 civilians were expected to be evacuated on Friday.
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