Kiev on Thursday said four soldiers had been killed and 14 injured in renewed clashes with separatist militants in the former Soviet country’s separatist east.

Kiev on Thursday said four soldiers had been killed and 14 injured in renewed clashes with separatist militants in the former Soviet country's separatist east.

Military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told reporters that the losses came in Lugansk -- the smaller of the two separatist provinces in Ukraine to have fallen under partial militia control in the past 16 months of conflict.

An upsurge in fighting that began last week in neighboring Donetsk and killed 10 people on Sunday has raised renewed fears of full-scale warfare returning to the edge of the European Union's unstable eastern front.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande  will meet Ukraine's Western-backed leader Petro Poroshenko in Berlin on Monday in a bid to rescue the deal.

The meeting will notably omit President Vladimir Putin.

NATO on Wednesday warned the separatists against grabbing more territory and stressed that Moscow had a "special responsibility" for restoring peace.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded by expressing hope the meeting with Merkel and Hollande "will be instructional" for Poroshenko and result in the agreed-upon withdrawal of Ukraine's biggest weapons from the frontline.