Poroshenko declares day of mourning:
President Petro Poroshenko has declared January 15 a day of mourning following a rocket attack in eastern Ukraine that killed 12 civilians on a passenger bus.
Poroshenko said on January 14 after meeting with regional governors in Kyiv that the order commemorates "all those, who died from terrorists' actions, and first of all, those 12 civilians, who were killed at military checkpoint near the town of Volnovakha" in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk.
Poroshenko said the world is mourning the victims of attack together with Ukraine.
Ukrainian Army officials said on January 13 that a Grad rocket fired by pro-Russian separatist forces hit a bus at the checkpoint, killing 12 passengers.
The separatist, self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic denied responsibility, saying the government checkpoint was "beyond our artillery's range."
The UN Security Council strongly condemned the attack on January 14. (UNIAN and Interfax)
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk speaking on January 14 at a cabinet meeting in Kyiv following a deadly rocket attack on a passenger bus in eastern Ukraine and intensified fighting around the Donetsk airport:
"The government of Ukraine calls upon all international organizations, our Western partners, to recognize the organisations of DNR and LNR [self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics] as terrorist organizations on a relevant political level and to take international legal measures in response to these terrorist bandit groups, which act under the protection of the Russian Federation."
More from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin:
"We call on Russia to respect the Minsk agreements, to use all its influence on the separatists to make them respect the cease-fire and to withdraw support for the separatists.
"NATO does not seek confrontation with Russia. NATO aspires for a more constructive and cooperative relationship with Russia, but to be able to establish that Russia must want it too.
"Ukraine has not applied for membership, what they have is that they have removed the decision they had earlier to be a non-bloc country but they have underlined themselves that they are now starting a process which aims at ending up with an application for becoming a member of NATO."