Bar any late-breaking news or announcements, this ends our live-blogging for February 6. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Last night's wrap-up from our news desk. In short: no progress:
The leaders of Germany and France ended more than five hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin without any word of an agreement to end the conflict in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had held "constructive, informative, substantive talks" with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in Moscow on February 6.
But Merkel and Hollande left Moscow without speaking publicly and no details were given about the content of the negotiations in the Kremlin, a big diplomatic push to end a conflict between Russian-backed separatists and government forces that has killed more than 5,350 people in eastern Ukraine since April.
Peskov said the leaders had agreed to continue working toward a possible joint document on implementing a cease-fire agreement signed in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in September.
He said the document would include proposals from Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and that Putin, Merkel, Hollande, and Poroshenko would hold discussions by phone on February 8.
The United States suggested it saw little sign of a shift in the conduct of the Kremlin, which Western governments are calling on to abandon support for separatists they say Moscow has armed, advised, and reinforced with Russian soldiers.
"I'm not going to say it's a positive sign that they're listening," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said of Russia. "They've been listening. They just haven't been acting."
Harf said that "the problem isn't that there aren't enough diplomatic possibilities, it is that Russia hasn't taken any of them and hasn't lived up to its commitments."
The separatists have seized control of hundreds of square kilometers of land since the September deal and have made gains in the past month, as fighting has escalation in what the United States calls a "Russian-backed offensive."
Hundreds of civilians have been killed since the New Year and many others driven from their homes in midwinter, particularly around Debaltseve, the site of persistent attacks on a government-held pocket straddling a key road junction between the separatist-controlled provincial capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Before arriving in Russia, Hollande called the talks "the first step", while Merkel said it was unclear whether the meeting in Moscow would secure a cease-fire.
Merkel and Hollande had discussed what they called a new peace proposal with Poroshenko in Kyiv on February 5.
The conflict, which erupted after Russia annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine in March, has sparked the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
On February 6, a brief truce was organized so trapped civilians could reach safety from Debaltseve.
Both sides sent convoys of buses, giving residents a choice to evacuate to government or rebel territory.
The government buses left full; the rebel buses left mostly empty.
The fresh diplomatic push by Germany and France comes as President Barack Obama is considering whether to arm Ukraine, a move many European leaders oppose.
At a security conference in Munich on February 6, U.S. General Philip Breedlove, the top military commander in NATO, suggested he favored sending weapons, saying the West should use "all the tools in the toolbag."
But German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen told the same conference: "Are we sure that we would be improving the situation for the people in Ukraine by delivering weapons? Are we really sure that Ukraine can win against the Russian military machine?"
Russia calls the conflict a "civil war" and denies sending troops or weapons to Ukraine despite what Kyiv and the West say is incontrovertible evidence of its direct military involvement.
Kyiv and Western governments believe Russia wants to weaken Ukraine and keep it out of NATO by maintaining a "frozen conflict" in the east for years to come, and fear Putin could support a rebel push to seize a swath of territory stretching from Donetsk to Crimea.
"Russia cannot be allowed to redraw the map of Europe, because that's exactly what they are doing," U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in Brussels before heading to a February 7-9 security conference in Munich that is being dominated by concerns about the Ukraine conflict.
He urged Europe and the United States to "stand together."
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk made a fresh appeal for military aid.
"Peace in Europe depends on peace in Ukraine and for us to achieve that peace Ukraine must have the means to defend itself. Not in offensive operations, but in defense operations," he said. (Reuters, AP, RIA Novosti, Interfax)