Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he will sign a decree on a new phase of mobilization on Wednesday, Jan. 14.
“I will sign a decree on another wave of mobilization tomorrow. I am sure the Ukrainian people will support this decision, and mobilization will be a success,” Poroshenko said in an address to the nation made public on Jan. 13 evening.
The president also called for tightening restrictions on movement of passengers across the contact line in the eastern part of the country.
At the same time, Poroshenko said his position regarding a peace process in eastern Ukraine remained unchanged. “I still remain an advocate of a peaceful settlement in Donbas within the framework of my peace plan and the Minsk agreements. I have been doing and will be doing everything possible and even impossible for this,” he said.
Poroshenko blamed the militants of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic for shelling a passenger bus at a roadblock near Volnovakha, in which 11 people were killed and 18 others injured.
He offered his condolences to the families and relatives of those killed in the incident and compared it to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.
Poroshenko said also that European Parliament President Martin Schulz intended to call on the European Union leaders on Thursday, Jan. 15, to put the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR and LPR) on the list of terrorist organizations.
“I’ve talked with the president of the European Parliament today. Martin Schulz assured me that the European Parliament would call on the European Union leadership on Thursday to include the so-called DPR and LPR in the list of terrorist organizations,” Poroshenko said.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry circulated a statement on Tuesday evening, saying that the passenger bus had been shelled “from the area of the town of Dokuchayevsk, which is under illegal armed units’ control” and that “there are no Ukrainian armed forces’ positions” around the checkpoint near which the bus came under fire.
Andriy Purhin, the speaker of the DPR people’s council, denied the militia’s responsibility for the attack on the bus at the Volnovakha roadblock earlier on Tuesday. “We don’t have technical ability to fire mortars [at this roadblock]. This is a matter for the Ukrainian side to look into,” Purhin told journalists.
