The EU foreign service, some of the Union's big member states and the US are not sending top people to an OSCE meeting in Kiev on Thursday (5 December) and Friday.
A spokeswoman for the EU foreign service chief, Catherine Ashton, said her political director, Helga Schmid, will go in her place.
France and the UK are planning to send deputies.
The German and Polish foreign ministers said on Wednesday they would go after previously planning to stay away. Poland's Radek Sikors...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.