Angela Merkel

Ukraine said on Feb. 12 there was no good news yet after 14 hours of tortuous talks between Kiev, Moscow, Berlin and France, as the Kremlin was posing "unacceptable conditions" on ending the 10-month conflict in the ex-Soviet country.
      

The fighting between government forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine has flared up again despite attempts to ease the tension through a cease-fire agreement, signed in Minsk on Sept. 5, 2014. After a December lull, the separatists renewed their attacks with not-so-hidden Russian support, pushing the country into a deeper chaos.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is on Thursday due to take part in his first European Union leaders? summit, where he is expected to set out his government?s proposals for a bridging agreement with the eurozone a day after Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis did so at the Eurogroup in Brussels.

Former IMF deputy and Princeton professor Ashoka Mody describes the recent intervention of US President Barack Obama in favor of Greece as admirable.

In his article for European think tank Bruegel, Mody says Obama’s position on Greece marks a change in the long-standing “tradition” of US “silence” regarding economic policy in Europe.

Leaders of the so-called Normandy group - France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine - gathered in Minsk on Wednesday to try to strike a peace deal for eastern Ukraine.

Thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday to support their new anti-austerity government which was locked in tough negotiations with eurozone partners in Brussels.

Satellite demonstrations were expected in Brussels, at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and elsewhere in Europe.

Presidents confirm participation in Minsk talks

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to Minsk today for a meeting that will discuss a solution to the Ukrainian crisis, the Kremlin has confirmed.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will also travel to Belarus this Wednesday, as will German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

More than twenty people were killed in eastern Ukraine on the eve of the peace talks that are scheduled to take place in Minsk on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian army lost nineteen soldiers, the majority of them killed near the key transport hub of Debaltseve, which has been surrounded by the separatists, the BBC reports.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told German Stern magazine that a debt that can't be paid off should lead to a cut. "We can call it many things," he added, nothing that the Greek as much as the German language were equally as verbally rich.

US President Obama held a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday regarding the rising tensions in Ukraine and the need for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, as stated in a White House press release.