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A priest stands in front of a hospital destroyed after shelling between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, Ukraine, on January 19.
A priest stands in front of a hospital destroyed after shelling between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern city of Donetsk, Ukraine, on January 19.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

Final Summary For January 20

-- A military spokesman says Ukrainian soldiers on January 20 came under attack from Russian regular forces in the north of the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.

-- Germany's foreign minister says he and his counterparts from Ukraine, Russia, and France will meet on January 21 in Berlin in a bid to de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

-- The chief of Russian gas giant Gazprom says Ukraine's discount "winter price" for natural gas will end on April 1. Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller said in a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that the price for Kyiv would be set in accordance with a long-standing contract, one Kyiv has long sought to change.

-- Russia says a European Union decision to keep sanctions against Russia in place shows the EU is not ready to change an "unfriendly course" toward Moscow. The EU's decision "only confirms the fact that the EU is still not ready to alter its unfriendly course or to give an objective assessment of the Kyiv authorities' actions," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

-- A Georgian man fighting on the Ukrainian side in the conflict in Ukraine has been killed in combat near the Donetsk airport, according to relatives. Media reports in Georgia quote members of Tamaz Sukhiashvili's family as saying he was killed in a battle near the bitterly contested airport on January 17.

-- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed deep concern over what it says is the "escalation" of violence between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine over the past two weeks. In a statement, the ICRC said the fighting in and around the city of Donetsk was killing civilians and "preventing" its team from carrying out its humanitarian work.

-- An explosion near a courthouse in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv has wounded 14 people, four of them seriously.

-- Russia says Kyiv is trying to solve the crisis in eastern Ukraine through military force and that could lead to "irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood." Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin spoke to Interfax news agency as Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of ignoring appeals for a cease-fire to be respected.

*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv

16:12 14.1.2015

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)

15:45 14.1.2015

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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."

13:29 14.1.2015

13:20 14.1.2015

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."

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