Here is an item from our news desk about the reported parading of POWs in Donetsk today, following deadly blast at a bus stop in the city:
Pro-Russian separatists on January 22 paraded captured Ukrainian soldiers in a Donetsk neighborhood where an explosion killed at least seven civilians earlier in the day.
Reports say residents hurled glass and shouted abuse at the prisoners, forcing them to their knees at a bus stop where the explosion struck a trolleybus.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who visited the site said they saw seven bodies.
Separatists and medical workers say 13 people were killed.
Moscow and Kyiv traded accusations over the blast, which witnesses said was caused by a mortar or artillery shell.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk blamed pro-Russian separatists and said Russia should bear responsibility.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the attack as a "monstrous new crime" by Ukrainian forces and a "crude provocation" aimed at undermining peace efforts.
Kyiv says 16 injured Ukrainian soldiers were captured on January 21 when government forces withdrew from the terminal buildings of Donetsk airport.
A battle was continuing at the airport on January 22, with Kyiv saying its troops still held parts of the facility.
(Reuters, AFP, Interfax, AP)
Here is another update from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- President Petro Poroshenko says Ukraine will remain a "unitary" state with strong central power in Kyiv and that its pursuit of integration with Europe must not be questioned.
The remarks on Unity Day sent a defiant message to Moscow in the midst of a conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
"With unity in our minds, with a united Ukraine in our hearts, we will forever be a single Ukrainian political nation consisting of many equal ethnic groups," Poroshenko said in a televised statement on January 22.
Unity Day, long celebrated to mark a 1919 treaty, now also commemorates those killed a year ago in a crackdown on the Euromaidan protests that toppled a Russian-backed president.
Russia has called on Ukraine to cede a large measure of power to its regions, including the eastern provinces where the rebels control two capitals, in a process it calls "federalization."
Poroshenko said Ukraine "will never be federative" and that "Ukraine's state language is and will be Ukrainian."
At the same time, he said Ukraine will never prohibit people from using Russian or any other language at home, at work, or in public.
Here's a short item courtesy of RFE/RL's Ukrainian and Belarusian services on today's important Maidan anniversary:
A year after their deaths, Ukraine is paying tribute to the first victims of a government crackdown on the Euromaidan protests that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych.
Hundreds of people in the western city of Lviv honored the memory of Mikhail Zhyzneuski of Belarus and Serzh Nihoyan, a Ukrainian of Armenian origin, by praying at a church and placing flowers at the graves of others who were killed during the protests.
A march was to be held in Kyiv later on January 22, marked as the Day of Unity in Ukraine.
Zhyzneuski and Nihoyan were shot dead in central Kyiv on January 22, 2014.
A third protester, Roman Senyk, was severely wounded that day and died three days later.
As the number of protesters shot by snipers or killed in clashes with police grew, the victims became known as the "Heavenly Hundred."
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine after Yanukovych fled in late February, and Moscow has backed pro-Russian separatists whose conflict with government forces has killed more than 4,800 people in eastern Ukraine since April.
No public commemorations were held for Zhyzneuski in Belarus, a Russian ally, and his mother said his grave had been vandalized.
With reporting by UNIAN