'No progress' at Ukraine peace meeting: Lavrov

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the meeting on Tuesday with his Ukrainian, French and German counterparts made "no progress" in ending the war between Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's east.

"It's presently impossible to even agree on the steps to be taken in terms of security and political reforms" in Ukraine, the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying after the huddle in the Belarusian capital Minsk.

"There was no progress today," he said, adding contact on the matters would continue between experts and diplomats.

At an October summit in Berlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko said they were aiming to resolve an impasse on the conflict by the end of November, vowing to put together a roadmap for applying the frayed 2015 Minsk peace accords.

Neither the Ukrainian government nor the pro-Russian rebels waging an insurgency in the country's east have fully implemented the agreements -- designed to bring an end to a conflict that has claimed 10,000 lives since 2014 -- and low-level fighting continues.

"Regarding the roadmap, the discussion remained very superficial" on Tuesday said Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin, who described the meeting as "very difficult".

"Sadly, we cannot announce any promising results" from the gathering, Klimkin added.

The Minsk accords call for a ceasefire along with a range of political, economic and social measures to end the conflict between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.