Internal Security News

• (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian military involved in the operation in eastern Ukraine was conducting raids and isolating areas controlled by militants.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Eighteen Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and 54 injured in the area of the military operation in eastern Ukraine over the last 24 hours.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The Netherlands suspended search operations on the MH17 crash site in Donetsk. According to Prime Minister Mark Rutte, "At this stage it is for dangerous international specialists in the region, given the deteriorating situation in the east of Ukraine."
   
• (RIA Novosti) The Malaysian Boeing plane that crashed in eastern Ukraine could have been brought down by an air-to-air missile and a cannon of the Su-25 fighter that had been “shadowing it,” The New Straits Times reported.
   
• (RIA Novosti) The militants who are operating on the east of Ukraine captured three employees of the Red Cross, the National Security and Defense Council reported.
   

Diplomacy News

• (Interfax Ukraine) NATO expressed its concern that Russia could use the pretext of a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission as an excuse to send troops into eastern Ukraine, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said. It went on to say that the Russian Foreign Ministry's proposal on an international humanitarian mission in the Donbas is cynical in view of continued destabilization of the situation in the region by the Russian side.
   
• Russia's sending of peacemaking contingent to Ukraine will be estimated as a direct aggression, First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration Hennadiy Zubko said.
   
• The European Union's ambassador to Russia said that EU-Russia relations "couldn't be worse."
   
• (ITAR-TASS) About 200 Ukrainian army soldiers who crossed into the neighboring Rostov region in southern Russia’s on August 4 were sent back home.
   
• Russian President Vladimir Putin banned or curbed agricultural imports from countries imposing sanctions on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned against attempts to intentionally hush up events in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The International Committee of the Red Cross supported Russia’s initiative to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine’s south-eastern regions under its auspices, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said that EU sanctions against Russia could lead to an economic crisis in Finland.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry demanded that Russia return Ukrainian servicemen.
   

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