Germans, French and Russians expected to push Kiev on election law

PARIS, March 2 - As ceasefire violations in Ukraine's east rise, foreign ministers from Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine are expected to meet in Paris on Thursday to discuss the Minsk peace deal.

One of the meeting's main goals will be to tackle what is now seen in some European capitals as the biggest hurdle to the peace deal -- Kiev's failure to push through an election law for the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that would set the stage for a vote there by mid-year, Reuters reported.

After barely surviving a no-confidence motion last month, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk is seen as too weak to deliver. And yet there are few viable alternatives to Yatseniuk.

"At some point you have to ask yourself, how can it go on like this?" a senior German official said of Minsk, which was hammered out a year ago in marathon talks in the Belarus capital between Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladmir Putin.

The election law was always going to be a tough sell domestically. There is little appetite in Ukraine to give Donbas more autonomy and hold elections there while its soldiers are being killed every week.

"It's all extremely fragile," a senior French official added, stressing the importance of the Paris meeting on Thursday.

For now, officials say, the goal is to keep Minsk on life support even if it looks dead.

Were they to openly admit failure, a second German official said, violence could spiral, with pro-Russian separatists running amok and renewing their push for Mariupol, a strategic port city in the east that, if captured by the rebels, could help them carve out a land corridor to Russia-annexed Crimea.

"It's a chaotic picture," the second German official acknowledged. "From a sequencing point of view you can't get around the fact that the election law needs to be passed. Kiev points to the security situation in the east as an excuse but we have told them it can't be. They need to deliver."

The other big concern is a breakdown of the European Union's consensus on sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis amid an increasingly poisonous atmosphere in the bloc, aggravated by divisions over the refugee crisis.

The commander of U.S. troops in Europe, Air-Force General Philip Breedlove, pointed a finger at Russia when he said on Tuesday violence in eastern Ukraine had increased significantly, with 71 attacks in 24 hours and 450 attacks over the past week.

"I believe that Russia will dial up and down the pressure along the line of contact to keep Kiev under pressure to meet their parts of the (Minsk) agreements first," he said.

Russia says it is not backing the rebels militarily while the rebels themselves blame Kiev for the violations. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says neither side has pulled heavy weapons back as required. (rt/ez)