Kiev's meeting with Putin will leave Ukraine with some tough choices

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People stand inside a makeshift bomb shelter in Makiyivka Tuesday. Pro-Russia rebels said seven civilians died when the eastern Ukrainian town was shelled by Kiev forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart will meet next week for the first time in two months, officials in both countries said, intensifying a diplomatic push that could force Kiev to choose between

continuing its military campaign

against pro-Russia separatists or making concessions to Moscow to stop the

bloodshed

.

Calls for a cease-fire from both Russia and Europe are growing louder amid a deepening

humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine

.

But Ukrainian politicians and voters are skeptical of agreeing to a truce now, since doing so could give the rebels the chance to consolidate control over some territory and give Russia long-term influence over their country.

Officials in Kiev said the meeting in Minsk, Belarus, on Aug. 26 could lead toward a peace plan to end the four-month insurgency in eastern Ukraine. In the latest sign of Western support, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would visit Kiev on Saturday, the day before Ukrainian Independence Day.

The Minsk gathering, which will also involve senior European Union officials, will be the first time Mr. Putin has met Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko since a brief encounter in June before the latter took office.

Western and Ukrainian officials sounded hopeful about the new round of diplomacy despite the sizable differences to be bridged. Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said the meeting was "a good thing, because there needs to be a peaceful end to this." She repeated accusations that Russia is supplying weapons and fighters, calling on Moscow to de-escalate.

That view was echoed in Kiev. "I can cautiously say that it's a chance to start a real negotiating process, which won't finish in one day and will need further steps," said Valeriy Chaliy, an aide to the Ukrainian president.

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Ukrainian soldiers walk in a trench as they guard their position in the Luhansk region on Monday.

The government in Kiev wants Russia to stop reinforcing the separatists, saying they should lay down their weapons before any talks. The rebels say they are ready to talk but won't put down their weapons, and they want Kiev to recognize their independence from Ukraine.

The Kremlin announced Mr. Putin's intention to attend the meeting in a brief statement, without saying what he hoped to achieve in Minsk. Russian officials have said Kiev should stop its military assault and negotiate with the insurgents.

Moscow says it has little influence on the separatists and, contrary to Western allegations, isn't supplying them with arms and fighters.

Mr. Putin has shown little sign of backing down from his main aim of keeping Ukraine in Russia's orbit. While he hasn't ordered a full-scale invasion by Russian troops massed on the border, he has shored up the rebels with large deliveries of arms and men, according to Western and Ukrainian officials.

At the same time, the Kremlin has tried to shift the public focus to the humanitarian crisis, calling for a halt in the fighting to let in a Russian aid convoy - just as advancing Kiev forces are pressing on the two main rebel strongholds.

Analysts and diplomats say permitting pro-Russia rebels to retain some territory in exchange for a cease-fire could create a frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine that would allow Mr. Putin to undermine attempts by Kiev to integrate with the West.

If Russia doesn't intervene in the fighting directly, "Moscow's strategy will focus on helping the rebels to fight Kiev's forces to a standstill - and negotiating a cease-fire making the rebels a party to an agreement," Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a commentary.

The separatists have also shown some signs of being ready to talk as they have lost significant territory. In recent weeks, the two main rebel leaders - both Russian citizens - stepped down and were succeeded by Ukrainians in an apparent attempt to give the leadership more local legitimacy.

In Kiev, there is pressure not to make a deal. Mr. Poroshenko faces a parliamentary election in October and a public that wants to see the separatists defeated.

Time, however, could affect public sentiment. War fatigue could creep in as the death toll, which has already surpassed 2,000, mounts. Battling domestic political headwinds will only get tougher as parliamentary elections in October approach. And as winter draws closer, Russia's central role in providing Ukraine's gas supply will make a thaw in relations more pressing.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian army released videos showing what it said were survivors of a rebel attack on a refugee convoy on Monday.

Elderly men describe how they and others were evacuated in two army trucks with white flags attached to indicate civilians were inside. One of the trucks was hit by a mortar and destroyed, sending shrapnel flying into the second truck, killing two and injuring four, one of them says.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said that 17 bodies had been recovered on Monday, but that fighting at the site meant the search for others had to be stopped.

The rebels denied the attack ever took place. The army accused the rebels of trying to destroy evidence by blocking the area and of shooting at military experts and journalists to prevent them from getting a closer look at the scene. They said Tuesday seven civilians had been killed during shelling of the town of Makiyivka near the rebel's main center of Donetsk.

Western officials hope that amid the increasingly dire humanitarian situation, both Ukraine and Russia will look for an exit from the crisis.

"I have the feeling both are at the moment seeking ways to find a path to a cease-fire," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said as he made the case on German television Tuesday for his efforts to mediate the crisis. "The paths that such talks take are sometimes not easily discernible or explicable."

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said the EU's foreign-policy chief, Catherine Ashton, will attend the Minsk meeting, along with the bloc's trade and energy commissioners. The presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan, which are part of a Russia-led Customs Union, are also expected to attend the meeting.