German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday pushed a new peace bid to end the Ukraine conflict, warning that sending weapons to government forces fighting pro-Russian rebels would not stop the bloodshed.

Fresh from overnight talks in Moscow with French President Francois Hollande to thrash out a new peace plan, Merkel said success was far from assured but it was essential to try.

The U.N. Security Council plans to adopt a resolution next week aimed at halting funding to Islamic State militants from oil, antique trafficking and ransoms, diplomats said Friday.

A draft text, drawn up by Russia, was distributed to the 15 member countries ahead of closed-door discussions.

The United States and Europe must stand together over Ukraine as it battles for survival in the face of escalating Russian military involvement, Vice President Joe Biden said during a visit to Brussels on Friday.

"We, the U.S. and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment," he said, amid reports of transatlantic divisions over whether to send weapons to support the Western-backed Kiev government.

Russia is highly likely to intervene in the Baltic states to test NATO's collective defense commitment, the former head of the Atlantic alliance was quoted as saying by Britain's Daily Telegraph on Friday.

"This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power," Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the daily.

A Pentagon study from 2008 claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has Asperger's syndrome, giving him a need to exert "extreme control" when faced with crises, according to the report released Thursday.

Experts studying his movements and facial expressions in video footage theorized Putin's neurological development was disrupted in infancy, giving him a sense of physical imbalance and a discomfort with social interaction, according to the report by the Pentagon's internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment.

Greece's new radical left Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras indicated on Thursday he would visit Russia in May at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin.

In a telephone call, "the Russian president congratulated the prime minister on the election of the new government... and invited him to Moscow on May 9", according to a statement issued by Tsipras' office.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande flew to Kiev Thursday with a new peace plan, in the biggest diplomatic push yet to halt an upsurge in deadly fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The two European leaders, who will present the plan to Russia Friday, arrived hot on the heels of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who said that Moscow held the cards to end the conflict.

Speaker Nabih Berri has said that the dialogue between Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal is putting a foundation for future plans, stressing that the two parties hold onto U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.

The dialogue, which is being held under his sponsorship in Ain el-Tineh, is based on “honesty,” Berri told al-Mustaqbal newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday condemned "in the strongest terms" last week's killing of a Spanish peacekeeper in southern Lebanon and decided to set up a board of inquiry to investigate his death, a senior U.N. official said.

Wednesday's statement comes a week after Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo was killed during the Israeli military's exchange of fire with Hizbullah in a disputed border area.

Russia is making a push at the United Nations for a new resolution to choke off funding from oil sales, the antiquities trade and ransom payments to the Islamic State group, diplomats said Wednesday.

The resolution could come before the Security Council this week and follows strong condemnation by the 15-member council of the gruesome murder of a Jordanian pilot by IS militants.