Updated

Senior officials from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France have met on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich to discuss the situation in eastern Ukraine.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Ukraine's Pavlo Klimkin, along with the French Foreign Ministry's political director Nicolas de Riviere, for a meeting Saturday.

Germany and France brokered a peace deal for eastern Ukraine in Minsk, Belarus a year ago and have been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to try to implement it. Still, fighting hasn't fully stopped and there has been little progress in bringing about a political settlement.

Steinmeier told the Munich Security Conference that "not talking to each other in times of crisis can't be the answer."