Russia on Wednesday said there was no justification to Ukraine's offensive against eastern separatists and demanded "urgent steps" be taken to end the seven-week campaign.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier by telephone that "there can be no justification for the punitive operation" and called for "urgent steps to be taken to end the bloodshed and to launch a dialogue between the Ukrainian people, including on the subject of sweeping constitutional reform".

The German government called on Russia Wednesday to step up its border controls to prevent pro-Russian separatists or weapons going into crisis-hit Ukraine.

Berlin expects that Moscow "along its border with Ukraine prevents separatists ready for violence from infiltrating, or that large quantities of weapons are transported", spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.

Uzbekistan's President Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov on Wednesday praised the outcome of the Ukrainian presidential election as promoting peace and calming "waves of fear" in other former Soviet states.

"The elections in Ukraine demonstrated that the majority of voters chose peace and stability in their country. They chose a united Ukraine," Karimov told reporters in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.

The bustling eastern Ukrainian hub of Donetsk resembled a ghost town Wednesday with shuttered stores and deserted streets after a devastating two-day firefight with separatists who had seized the airport.

The gleaming Sergei Prokofiev International Airport -- rebuilt at a cost of $900 million (660 million euros) for the Euro 2012 football championship -- stood with its vast glass facade shattered after the army used fighter bombers and helicopters to attack more than 100 pro-Russian militants who had captured the building on Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin id due to meet his French counterpart Francois Hollande for Ukraine talks on the eve of events marking the D-Day anniversary, a Kremlin aide said Wednesday.

"The meeting will take place in the evening of June 5 in Paris at the Elysee Palace. The sides will discuss various multilateral international questions including the Ukraine crisis," presidential aide Yury Ushakov told journalists, the Interfax news agency reported.

Ukraine's newly elected president vowed on Wednesday to quickly end an eastern revolt after a fierce army push to reclaim a major airport saw more than 40 pro-Russian rebels killed.

The deserted streets of the million-strong rust belt city of Donetsk echoed with bursts of morning gunfire after a devastating two-day firefight in which Ukrainian fighter bombers flushed out more than 100 gunmen who had seized the region's most important air hub.

Ukraine moved a step further closer to visa-free travel to the EU on Tuesday when the EU's executive ruled it had put in place the required legislative reforms.

Ukraine "meets the first-phase requirements," a European Commission statement said. "The second phase where the Commission will be checking the implementation of these rules can therefore be launched."

Two Ukrainian journalists accused of "spying" have been taken hostage by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern district of Luhansk, the OSCE's monitoring group said Tuesday.

The two journalists and their driver were abducted on 25 May at a checkpoint in Shchastia, 24 kilometers north of Luhansk, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) said in a statement.

The prosecution on Tuesday called for jail terms of up to life for the five men convicted of the murder of prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

A jury at the Moscow city court last week convicted the five of organizing and carrying out the shooting of Politkovskaya, a vehement critic of the Kremlin's policies in Chechnya.

A team of international monitors with the OSCE was detained at a checkpoint in restive eastern Ukraine on a day of deadly fighting between government forces and pro-Russian gunmen, officials said Tuesday.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it had lost contact with the four-member team as they were on patrol in the main rebel-held city of Donetsk on Monday.