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* Western capitals worry Kiev will not keep its side of deal
* Ceasefire violations increased over past week
* U.S. commander blames Russia, Moscow denies any role
* Pressure growing for sanctions on Russia to be lifted
By Noah Barkin and John Irish
BERLIN/PARIS, March 2 (Reuters) - For months, as progress in implementing the Minsk peace deal for eastern Ukraine stalled, its architects, Germany and France, held out hope that with time and carefully calibrated pressure on Kiev and Moscow, the agreement could be pushed back on track.
But since a joint visit by the German and French foreign ministers to Ukraine's capital last week, a gloomier view has taken hold: that political dysfunction in Kiev has all but doomed the chances of it delivering on its own commitments under the peace agreement.
Against that backdrop and a rise in ceasefire violations in the east, where Ukrainian government forces are faced off against pro-Russian rebels, ministers from Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine meet in Paris on Thursday to discuss Minsk.
One of the meeting's main goals is to tackle what is now seen in many European capitals as the biggest hurdle to the peace deal -- Kiev's failure to push through an election law for the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine that would set the stage for a vote there by mid-year.
After barely surviving a no-confidence motion last month, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk is seen as too weak to deliver. And yet there are few viable alternatives to Yatseniuk.
"At some point you have to ask yourself, how can it go on like this?" a senior German official said of Minsk, which was hammered out a year ago in marathon talks in the Belarus capital between Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladmir Putin.
The election law was always going to be a tough sell domestically. There is little appetite in Ukraine to give Donbass more autonomy and hold elections there while its soldiers are being killed every week.
"It's all extremely fragile," a senior French official added, stressing the importance of the Paris meeting on Thursday.
For now, officials say, the goal is to keep Minsk on life support even if it looks dead.
Were they to openly admit failure, a second German official said, violence could spiral, with pro-Russian separatists running amok and renewing their push for Mariupol, a strategic port city in the east that, if captured by the rebels, could help them carve out a land corridor to Russia-annexed Crimea.