Russian and European leaders said they made little progress in two days of talks in Milan to shore up a fragile cease-fire in Ukraine's easternmost regions, where explosions and artillery fire shook Donetsk on Saturday after government forces repelled another rebel attack on the city's airport.
The talks involving Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made headway on few issues, including gas deliveries and border surveillance.
Putin, who had flown to Milan for the Asia-Europe summit and held meetings, including a talk with Merkel, sat down last week for bilateral negotiations with Poroshenko. Their meeting lasted about 40 minutes, and the Russian leader offered an opening on the issue of deploying drones to monitor the countries' border.
"We agreed that we will use drones, modern equipment that allows us to define sites of strikes, if this happens," Putin said. "Russia will take part in this."
All sides indicated that there's a preliminary agreement on Russian gas deliveries over Ukraine, with Russia saying it wants $4.5 billion in back payments. The European Union gets about 15 percent of its natural gas for electricity and heating from Russia via pipelines crossing Ukraine. But Poroshenko denied that the agreement represents progress.
"This is actually the same as we agreed" in earlier meetings, Poroshenko said Friday. "The main problem is implementation of the agreement reached."
The leaders sought to prop up a six-week truce that's been threatened by skirmishes between Ukrainian troops and the pro-Russia separatists.
Ukrainian government troops on Saturday repelled an attack on Donetsk Airport that left two soldiers dead, said Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council spokesman Volodymyr Polevyi.
Information for this article was contributed by Volodymyr Verbyany of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/19/2014