Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko will meet with top European officials next week to attempt to turn down the heat in the Ukraine Crisis.  This comes as Ukrainian forces are gradually retaking territory from Moscow-backed separatists in the east of the country.

It will be the first time the two leaders will be in the same room since a brief encounter in France in June.  However, no face-to-face meeting between the two men was planned as yet.  EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will lead the European team.

In the key eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, government troops are engaged in street-to-street battles with the rebels, and have regained one district.  Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting and the city is suffering painful shortages of water, food, and electricity.  Likewise, residents in the center of Donetsk fled as shells fired by government troops fell near the rebel headquarters.  53,000 ethnic Russians from Ukraine are now sheltering in Russia’s Rostov region, just over the border.