ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AFP) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko agreed on Thursday that the delayed talks on the Ukraine conflict with leaders of Russia, France and Germany will take place at the end of the month.

In a telephone call, the two leaders "noted that the meeting of leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France in Kazakhstan's capital Astana will happen at the end of January", the Kazakh Presidency said in a statement.

The mooted talks on resolving the conflict between Kiev and pro-Russia separatists, provisionally scheduled for Friday, were scrapped this week after a new bout of violence in the region, where over 4,800 people have been killed since April.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian agency RIA-Novosti that Moscow is preparing for the high-level talks and that the date has not been agreed yet.