Steinmeier said he has proposed that representatives of Kyiv and the Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine meet immediately with representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for talks on reducing tensions.
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Lavrov’s comments came as clashes broke out near the port city of Mariupol and the rebel-held town of Horlivka, near the pro-Russian separatist stronghold of Donetsk.
It has also drawn expressions of concern among Western governments, who see a ceasefire and tentative peace agreement worked out in Minsk, Belarus, as still the best chance of ending the separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine.
He said two Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and seven wounded by separatists in the past 24 hours.
Regional monitor in Mariupol, a harbour metro area toward the Sea of Azov, said one or more mankind as well as a person were actually killed if rebels shelled the small town of Sartan, about 20 kilometer (12 distances) away on Sunday.
“On one real world there was clearly five holds that were really seriously ruined by casing pieces. But the house had been wrecked by shells and I saw an enormous pool of blood”, a local news photographer, Mykola Ryabchenko, told Reuters by telephone.
Meanwhile the separatist news website DAN said three people were killed and four wounded by government shelling Horlivka. The Kremlin said Putin was promoting tourism on the peninsula.
But Lavrov said that the negotiations have stalled because of inflexibility by the Ukrainian government and that the area separating the Ukrainian forces from the rebels can no longer be described as a “contact line”, but rather a “front”.
The upsurge in fighting weighed on the Russian ruble on Monday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last week expressed “grave concern” to Lavrov over a rise in separatist attacks and urged an immediate halt to shooting.
The United Nations estimates that the conflict has killed more than 6,800 people from April 2014 and has driven at least 1.4 million from their homes.
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Military escalation could happen at any moment if the parties involved don’t concentrate on the peace process, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier told his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, according to an interview with Bild am Sonntag published Sunday.
