European Union foreign ministers are meeting for a second day in the Latvian capital, Riga, on March 7 for talks focusing on the war in eastern Ukraine.
The gathering of ministers from the EU’s 28 member states comes amid heightened tensions between the EU and Russia over Moscow's support for separatists in Ukraine.
Implementation of the Minsk cease-fire agreements brokered in September and February was high on the Riga agenda.
On March 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier agreed in a telephone conference on the need for the European security organization, the OSCE, to double the number of its monitors in Ukraine to 1,000.
Kyiv and the West accuse Russia of deploying troops and weaponry in Ukraine’s east to the support the separatists.
Despite daily evidence supporting the allegations, Moscow denies sending Russian troops or weaponry into eastern Ukraine.