A fresh round of peace talks with Ukraine's pro-Russian rebels will take place in the Belarusian capital on Wednesday and Friday, President Petro Poroshenko said after speaking by phone with his French, Russian and German counterparts.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev followed his Belarusian counterpart to Ukraine on Monday as Moscow's old allies reassessed their reliance on Russia in the heat of its financial malaise.

The authoritarian leader of Belarus visits Kiev on Sunday hoping to revive stalled Ukrainian peace talks he has been hosting in order to calm Europe's volatile eastern edge.

But a high-ranking Ukrainian official said Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko will be just as keen to use the trip to build bridges to Europe that ease his dependence on an increasingly isolated Russia.

As Italian and Barber fiddled with a broken television set in their base near Ukraine's frontline, Accurate laid down his Kalashnikov to tuck into a bowl of borsch.

Across rebel-held territory in the war-ravaged east, since the start of the Russian-fueled conflict the vast array of military nicknames used by insurgent fighters has become a strange feature of everyday life.

The latest round of Ukraine-related sanctions by the United States and Canada hamper efforts to resolve the conflict, Russia's foreign ministry said Saturday.

"The sanctions are directed to disrupt the political process," the ministry said in a statement following the announcement of the latest measures on Friday. 

Sitting up with difficulty in her hospital bed, Raisa Bulda says that despite months of treatment she still feels like she is only just beginning her recovery.

It was back in August that a shell tore through her home on the edge of rebel bastion Donetsk in eastern Ukraine and left her screaming for help in a pool of blood. 

Ukrainian forces lost five soldiers on Friday in a sudden resurgence of clashes ahead of peace talks aimed at ending the separatist conflict and mending East-West ties.

The toll was the highest since Kiev and Russian-backed militias struck a December 9 truce designed to reinforce a tenuous September agreement that was followed by at least 1,300 more deaths.

Peace talks between Ukraine's leaders and Kremlin-backed rebels could take place Sunday or Monday in the Belarussian capital Minsk in the presence of Russian and OSCE envoys, French President Francois Hollande said.

These talks will "happen on Sunday or Monday," Hollande said after an EU summit on Thursday, referring to the peace talks that will take place between the rebels and the Ukrainian government delegates in Minsk.

New EU president Donald Tusk said Thursday the bloc needs a strategy on Russia lasting years, not just weeks or months, to cope with the problems raised by its intervention in Ukraine.

"We need a long perspective strategy... plans for years. We need to be realistic, we have to treat this as a long-term game," Tusk said after chairing his first European Union leaders summit, which reviewed relations with Russia.

President Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday that Russia would rapidly recover from its financial crisis and said his grip on power was firm, even as new Western sanctions and a run on the ruble pile on the pressure.

The Russian strongman, who is locked in a confrontation with the West, showed no willingness to change tack on Ukraine and dismissed the possibility of the country's elite turning against him.