KIEV, January 18. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Sunday vowed to revive Donbass.
“We will cede not a single piece of the Ukrainian land, we will revive Donbass and demonstrate that our strength is in unity,” Poroshenko said at a march in memory of terror victims.
The march in central Kiev drew more than 10,000 participants, who carried Ukrainian flags and posters reading in Ukrainian and French “I am Volnovakha.” Participants held a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the tragedy near Volnovakha.
The tragedy in the city of Volnovakha, some 60 kilometers to the southwest of Donetsk, occurred on January 13, when a bus was hit by a shell, killing 13 civilians and wounding at least 16 others. Kiev insists that the bus was shelled by Donetsk militias from multiple launch rocket systems. The self-proclaimed republic’s leadership denied its involvement in the attack, saying the tragedy was the result of Kiev’s provocation.
On Saturday, in its daily update for January 16, the Special Monitoring Mission /SMM/ to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe /OSCE/ said investigation results demonstrated that shell craters indicated that shells had been fired from the north-north-east direction. “The SMM conducted a comprehensive inspection, focusing on five craters caused by explosions that had occurred during the incident. The investigation included comprehensive crater analysis of two specific blast craters, including the crater located 10 metres from the side of the passenger bus. In the SMM’s assessment all craters examined were caused by rockets fired from a north-north-eastern direction,” the document said.
Commenting on this report, Russia’s Permanent Representative at the OSCE Andrey Kelin told TASS that these data disproved allegations voiced by Kiev and Washington that militias of the self-proclaimed republics were to blame for the tragedy.