MILAN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Italy had not led to a breakthrough in the standoff over Ukraine.

“I cannot see a breakthrough here at all so far,” Merkel said after top EU leaders met with Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the sidelines of an EU-Asia summit.

“We will continue to talk. There was progress on some details, but the main issue is continued violations of the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” she added.

Less than half an hour after host Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had said he was “really positive after this meeting,” Moscow shot back that some of Putin’s interlocutors had got it completely wrong.

“Unfortunately, some participants ... demonstrated complete unwillingness to understand the reality in southeastern Ukraine,” the state RIA Novosti news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

“There are plenty of disagreements, plenty of incomprehension,” Peskov said, conceding only that the talks would continue.

Peskov’s comments were in sharp contrast to Renzi’s upbeat account of the early morning meeting between Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the leaders of Britain, France and Germany.

British Prime Minister David Cameron also echoed Renzi’s view that the talks were positive, noting Putin had “said very clearly that he doesn’t want a frozen conflict and he doesn’t want a divided Ukraine.”

In that case, Cameron warned, it was up to Putin to prove it, otherwise tough Western sanctions against Russia would have to stay in place.

The diplomatic exchanges over Ukraine took place on the sidelines of an Asia-Europe (ASEM) summit completely overshadowed by a crisis which has also claimed Asian victims.

Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte met Putin to demand “maximum cooperation” with an investigation into the July shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, which cost nearly 300 lives, more than half of them Dutch.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, whose country had 38 citizens or residents on board, also raised the issue with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, saying Moscow “has not been as cooperative as we would have expected.”

The next summit, due in 2016, will be held in Mongolia.