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Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says he will "calm" fighting between his forces and Russian-backed separatist in the country's east a day after rocket fire killed 30 people in and around the port city of Mariupol.

Poroshenko, speaking after an emergency meeting of Ukraine's security council, said reviving a shattered peace deal agreed in September was the only way out of the conflict.

The Ukrainian leader also said that, in case there was any doubt, that intercepted radio transmissions showed conclusively that it was the rebels who attacked government-held Mariupol, hitting an open-air market and a residential area.

The Associated Press notes that "the attack on Mariupol, a strategically situated port city that had been relatively quiet for months, alarmed the West and looked likely further to aggravate relations with Russia."

President Obama, speaking in New Delhi, said the U.S. was prepared to "ratchet up the pressure on Russia" to get it to stop supporting the separatists.

"We are deeply concerned about the latest break in the ceasefire and the aggression that these separatists — with Russian backing, Russian equipment, Russian financing, Russian training and Russian troops — are conducting," Obama told a news conference in India.

"I will look at all additional options that are available to us short of military confrontation and try to address this issue. And we will be in close consultation with our international partners, particularly European partners," he said.

The BBC has a bit of background:

"More than 5,000 people have been killed in fighting since the rebels seized a large swathe of Donetsk and Luhansk regions last April, UN officials say. More than a million people have been displaced.

"Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of arming the rebels and sending its troops into Ukrainian territory.

"Russia has denied directly arming the separatists, and blames Ukraine for the upsurge in fighting."

crisis in Ukraine

Russia

In the latest attack by the suspected Boko Haram extremists in Nigeria, militants shelled the northeastern city of Maiduguri, Reuters reports quoting witnesses.

The BBC says fierce fighting is reported on the outskirts of Maiduguri, which is "home to tens of thousands of people who have fled the attacks by Boko Haram attacks and was visited on Saturday by President Goodluck Jonathan."

Reuters says:

"The assault on Maiduguri began just after midnight and that on Monguno later in the morning. At around 9 am (0800 GMT) on Sunday, a Reuters witness in Maiduguri said shelling could be heard and that military helicopters were circling the city.

"All roads have been closed, a security source said, and commercial activity has been shut down."

The reports come weeks after the Islamist extremist group killed as many as 2,000 people 100 miles northeast of Maiduguri, in the town of Baga. Both cities are in the border state of Borno, which has seen the brunt of attacks by the extremist group in recent months. Boko Haram also kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls from the city of Chibok last April and the fate of most of them is still unclear.

The latest attack also comes as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to meet with Nigeria's president and his rival in next month's presidential elections in an effort to ensure the results of the poll will be accepted peacefully.

Boko Haram

Nigeria

The movie American Sniper is a surprise box-office hit, but it has also become a lightning rod. Some critics say the film, based on the life of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, glorifies war. Others say it doesn't accurately portray the real Kyle. Still others say the movie — and the reactions to it — are an example of the deep disconnect between civilians and the military.

The vitriol has been ugly, the story complicated. There is no one truth. But when it comes to war, the most credible sources are often people who've experienced it firsthand.

Former Marine Jacob Schick is a warrior relations specialist with the Brain Performance Institute in Dallas. He has a small part in the movie as one of the veterans Kyle mentors. When Schick was in Iraq in 2004, the Humvee he was riding in hit a tank mine. "It blew right underneath me and then blew me through the top of the Humvee," he recalls. "Their guesstimation is 30 feet, and [I] stuck the landing on my head."

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Former Marine Jacob Schick (at right) has a small part in American Sniper as one of the veterans mentored by Chris Kyle Keith Bernstein/Warner Bros. hide caption

itoggle caption Keith Bernstein/Warner Bros.

Former Marine Jacob Schick (at right) has a small part in American Sniper as one of the veterans mentored by Chris Kyle

Keith Bernstein/Warner Bros.

Schick lost part of his hand, part of his arm and part of his leg. But he says his most debilitating issues were post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. "Physical pain lets you know you're alive; mental pain will test your will to stay that way," he says.

And that is one reason Schick believes the movie American Sniper is important. He says it shows the effect combat has on someone who lives through it — in this case, Chris Kyle. Kyle did four tours in Iraq, fighting in some of the war's bloodiest battles.

In his memoir, Kyle wrote about his experiences in Iraq with direct, unvarnished language. The book was a best-seller. It was also condemned by critics for its callous tone: He calls Iraqis "savages" and says he "loved killing bad guys" to protect Marines.

"Chris Kyle's story is an uneasy story," says Nicholas Schmidle, staff writer for The New Yorker. Schmidle wrote an extensive article about Kyle — and the former Marine who killed him while they were at a shooting range near Glen Rose, Texas. He says Kyle wasn't the only soldier to be crass when talking about the enemy. "He did dehumanize the enemy," Schmidle says. "That is something, however, that is part of training. That's part of preparing young men and women to go to war."

Movie Interviews

Bradley Cooper And 'American Sniper' Widow Team Up To Tell SEAL's Story

Another reason for the backlash against American Sniper is the fantastical stories Kyle told about himself after he left the Navy. He said he killed two men who tried to carjack him in Texas. He said he went to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and shot people from the roof of the Superdome. On the radio Opie & Anthony Show, he claimed to have punched former Minnesota governor (and Navy veteran) Jesse Ventura at a bar after Ventura supposedly made disparaging remarks about soldiers.

It never happened, and Ventura won a defamation suit against Kyle. The other stories have also never been proved. Actor and producer Bradley Cooper has said that American Sniper is a "character study," but there's no mention of this part of Kyle's character in the movie.

That's a problem for Alyssa Rosenberg, a cultural columnist for The Washington Post. Rosenberg says omitting Kyle's fabrications — as well as his bragging about things like bar fights — makes the movie incomplete.

"By sort of stripping away a lot of details of Chris Kyle's views, he becomes less the man he was, and less the man he was trained to be, and less the man the American government and populace asked him to be," she says. "And so the movie isn't willing to make the case for Chris Kyle as he was."

But foreign affairs writer Alex Horton says American Sniper is just a movie, "and you can't include everything in the book, and you can't include everything in the universe about Chris Kyle."

Horton is an Army veteran who fought in the Iraq War. He believes the backlash against American Sniper has less to do with the movie than it does with people's feelings about that war. "It shows that we're still not ready to have an adult, clear-eyed conversation about the Iraq War. The wounds are still fresh. It's still heavily politicized," he says.

And, Horton adds, few Americans experienced the Iraq War, either firsthand or through friends or family.

Web Resources

Nicholas Schmidle: 'In the Crosshairs'

Alex Horton: 'American Sniper feeds America's hero complex, and it isn't the truth about war'

Jacob Schick's 'Open Letter to Warriors'

Republican heavyweights Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush are already out shaking the money trees for possible 2016 presidential runs, and now Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is putting out the word that he is, too.

His Reclaim America PAC has hired prominent fundraiser Anna Rogers. His major donors are gathering in Miami Beach Friday and Saturday for a "Team Rubio 2016" political update and finance committee meeting. Rubio is featured Sunday at the billionaire Koch brothers' "American Recovery Policy Forum" in Palm Springs, along with fellow senators and presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Then Rubio will spend next week in California attending fundraisers, and a big part of February on a book tour that will take him to all the early voting primary states.

Of course, actively jumping into fundraising doesn't necessarily improve Rubio's odds — or even the likelihood that he will ultimately run.

He's still in his first term in the Senate after serving two years as Florida House speaker. He faces a crowded field of rivals, led at the moment by 2012 nominee Romney and former Florida Gov. Bush. Romney has proven he can raise $1 billion for a presidential run, and Bush has set upon an aggressive fundraising push that will include 60 finance events by the end of March.

Given those challenges, the obvious question arises: Why would Rubio run? In reality, though, a better question might be: Why wouldn't Rubio run?

A full year before the first voters are set to cast ballots, there are a number of good reasons for Rubio to go ahead with a presidential bid right now, at least for the coming months.

Here are five:

Practice makes perfect

Running for president isn't easy. It's a big country, and even when focusing on the early voting states for campaigning and the big money states for fundraising, a presidential bid is a costly, time-consuming, difficult production – which help explains why many of those who have won their party's nomination have only done so after trying and failing in previous attempts. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, Al Gore and Mitt Romney all come to mind. Running now, even in the likely event that Rubio falls short, still adds to his email and fundraising lists – way more than just running for re-election does.

The money is just as green for a Senate run

Money raised by Rubio's leadership PAC can be used by Rubio as he explores a presidential run – or it can be used as he contemplates a run for re-election in 2016. If Rubio gets to the point where he creates an actual presidential campaign account and then winds up not running, Federal Election Commission rules allow any money left over to be transferred to Rubio's Senate account (subject to individual contributor limits). Similarly, if Rubio's allies were to create a superPAC that's not technically under his control, presumably they would be in sync with his goals and switch over to support his run for re-election, should he ultimately do that. As to his statements that he will not pursue both offices at once – he wouldn't have to. He could run for president now, decide later this year to give up on that goal...and then some months later announce that an outpouring of support from Floridians has persuaded him to seek re-election, after all. Florida's filing deadline for federal candidates is not until May 2016. Rubio would have plenty of time for a graceful transition.

David Rivera

The former Florida congressman is facing a federal investigation into his 2012 re-election bid. A friend of Rivera has already been convicted of steering money to a sham candidate in the Democratic primary that year, and that friend has been talking to prosecutors about Rivera's role. Unfortunately for Rubio, Rivera was his closest confidante and top lieutenant during Rubio's years in the Florida House. The two even co-owned a home in Tallahassee, on which a bank started foreclosure proceedings after they missed a number of payments over a dispute over the mortgage terms. Rubio has not been implicated at all in Rivera's 2012 problem, but their association will no doubt be an issue Rubio's opponents will use in a presidential run. But on a subsequent presidential run, Rubio could shrug off queries about Rivera as old news – as a topic that's been thoroughly vetted previously.

Sell, sell, sell

Rubio is out with his new book, American Dreams. And while someone like Romney, whose net worth is in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars, may not need the money, Rubio probably could. He's only 43, and has spent most of his years since leaving law school in elective office. The $174,000 salary for members of Congress is more than triple the median household income, but it must pay for running two households, one in pricey Washington, D.C., and one in almost-as-pricey Miami. Which book is more marketable: one by a senator who's already settled on seeking a second term? Or one by a presidential aspirant? (Granted, most books don't make a ton of money. But $4 a book selling, say, 20,000 copies? That's not so shabby.)

The Naval Observatory isn't so bad

Running to be the chief executive of the United States when still in your first term in the Senate might be a stretch – particularly when your party has made President Obama's similar inexperience a major critique. But the number two job on the ticket? Some of the features that make Rubio so attractive as a presidential candidate – his Cuban-American ethnicity, his youth, his presumed strength in a key swing state – might be just as attractive as a running mate. (That is, if the nominee is anyone other than Bush. Bush has a Mexican-born wife, is fluent in Spanish and is arguably a stronger statewide candidate in Florida than Rubio.) And then, win or lose, Rubio would be considered a top contender either 4 or 8 years later. So if 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is out of reach this time, the house a couple of miles to the northwest maybe isn't a bad second choice.

2016 Republican presidential nomination

Sen. Marco Rubio