The leader of Germany's "anti-Islamisation" movement PEGIDA stepped down Wednesday after a picture emerged of him sporting a Hitler-style haircut and moustache, along with racist slurs he posted on Facebook.

"Yes, I am stepping down from the board," Lutz Bachmann, 41, was quoted as telling Bild daily in an online report.

Western countries are trying to use the Ukraine conflict to topple President Vladimir Putin and wreck Russia's economy, the president's spokesman said in an interview published on Wednesday.

"In the West they are trying to kick out Putin, to isolate him in international politics, to throttle Russia economically due to their interests, to bring down Putin," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russian forces of attacking its soldiers after crossing over into the ex-Soviet state's war-wrecked separatist east in violation of a September truce deal.

The charges -- met with initial silence by Moscow -- should add further tensions to difficult talks in Berlin on Wednesday aimed at stemming a spike in fighting that has already killed 4,800 people and driven a million from their homes.

The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France are set to meet Wednesday in Berlin in a bid to de-escalate the Ukraine conflict, Germany said.

"The chief aim now is to prevent a further deterioration of the military conflict and a renewed political escalation between Kiev and Moscow. This is worth every effort," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a statement.

Investment sentiment in Germany hit an 11-month high this month on hopes the European Central Bank is about to roll out its heavy anti-deflation artillery, analysts said on Tuesday.

The widely watched investor confidence index calculated by the ZEW economic institute jumped 13.5 points to 48.4 points in January, its highest level in 11 months, ZEW said in a statement.

German police searched more than a dozen suspected Islamist sites early on Tuesday, seeking associates of two men who have been detained for allegedly planning an attack in Syria, police said.

No one was detained in the raids, which saw more than 200 officers search 13 apartments in Berlin, a neighboring region and in the east, said a police statement.

Germany's "anti-Islamisation" movement PEGIDA vowed at its first press conference Monday to take to the streets again next week after a march was canceled over a terrorism threat.

Asked about plans for future rallies in the eastern city of Dresden, the leader of the populist group, Lutz Bachmann, said that "next Monday obviously there will be another one, that's the state of play right now".

Negotiators for Iran and six global powers striving to reach a complex deal on Tehran's nuclear program had "serious and useful" discussions in Geneva Sunday and will meet again next month, the EU said.

High level officials from the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia met with Iran's deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi for a day of talks as part of "ongoing diplomatic efforts to find a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear issue," the European Union said in a message sent to journalists.

German police banned a planned rally by the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement and other public open-air gatherings in the eastern city of Dresden Monday, citing a terrorist threat.

Dresden police said Sunday they had received information from federal and state counterparts indicating a "concrete threat" against the right-wing populist group "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident."

Voters gathered around a smartly-dressed candidate from Greece's anti-austerity party Syriza in an affluent Athens suburb asking the question everybody wants answered: Will the country go bust?

But then the Syriza candidate quickly had to field what's proving another tricky question for his party ahead of next week's elections: Do they have a united plan?