Berlin and Moscow still differ widely on Ukraine - Steinmeier

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adjusts his glasses during a news conference after a meeting with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Moscow, November 18, 2014. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany and Russia have widely diverging views on the conflict in Ukraine which is a long way from reaching a solution, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Wednesday, a day after meeting President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

"We are still in a situation unfortunately where we're far from a sustainable deescalation of the conflict and further still from a political solution," Steinmeier said in Berlin after his one-day visit to Kiev and Moscow on Tuesday.

Steinmeier told reporters after meeting Poland's foreign minister that Berlin had a "substantially different view of events in Ukraine" to Putin, adding that it should be clear in two or three weeks if his talks with Putin had helped.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown, Erik Kirschbaum and Sabine Siebold)