MOSCOW. Jan 22 (Interfax) - Kyiv has taken advantage of the January 13 shelling of a passenger bus near Volnovakha, eastern Ukraine, to further fuel the war hysteria, Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, has said.
"The Ukrainian authorities took full advantage of this tragedy in order to fuel the war hysteria," Churkin said at a UN Security Council meeting dedicated to Ukraine.
This incident "was used by Kyiv in order to immediately accuse militiamen of this crime without conducting any investigation," he said.
"However, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission concluded that the rockets had been fired from a north-eastern direction, where the presence of any militia forces was highly unlikely," Churkin said.
"And the following day saw an intensification of artillery strikes and bombardments of Donbas by the Ukrainian army, claiming the lives of dozens of civilians, among them women, children and elderly people," he said.