Internal Security News

• (RIA Novosti) Fighting was continuous in several districts in the Donetsk region. Clashes continued on the outskirts of Slaviansk and Kramatorsk, from which the main separatist forces recently retreated.
   
• A Ukrainian military spokesman said government forces re-took the town of Siversk, east of Slaviansk, when separatists fled.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The Ukrainian army and National Guard units will successfully end the operation to assume control over Donetsk and Luhansk within a month, the Ukrainian interior minister’s adviser Stanislav Rechinsky predicted.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) A fight near the village of Karlivka in the Donetsk region ended with one casualty on the Ukrainian side and around 25 on the separatists’.
   
• The Ukrainian military said it has a plan to deliver a "nasty surprise" to the heavily-armed separatists in Donetsk.
   
• Three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in clashes with pro-Russian separatist rebels in the east of the country overnight on July 9-10. The Ukrainian Health Ministry reported that as many as 478 civilians have been killed and 1,392 more injured during the course of the operation.
   

Diplomacy News

• (ITAR-TASS) Russia's Foreign Ministry submitted to the OSCE the second edition of the "White Paper" on violations of human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine, which describes the alleged humanitarian crimes Ukrainian authorities from early April to mid-June.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The Foreign Minister of Ukraine said that Ukraine doesn't believe that an unscheduled meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council initiated by Russia to discuss the humanitarian situation in Ukraine is possible.
   
• (RIA Novosti) The Russian Foreign Ministry alleged that the OSCE failed to give an adequate response to regular cross-border shelling of Russian territory by Ukraine. “Of particular concern are numerous reports about the use of indiscriminate weapons by Ukrainian law-enforcement bodies in southeastern cities and the deliberate destruction of vital infrastructure objects. Nonetheless, they are being ignored by OSCE monitors."
   
• (ITR-TASS) Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich denied reports that Russia was preparing to launch a peacekeeping operation in Ukrainian territory.
   
• The Ukrainian State Border Service denied Russia's claims that Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko, who was captured by militants in eastern Ukraine and then emerged at a Russian detention facility in Voronezh, had officially crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border. Ukrainian consul in Moscow Hennadiy Breskalenko was in Voronezh and ready to meet with Savchenko, who is being held in pretrial custody. The U.S. embassy to Russia called for her immediate release. Ukraine’s Justice Minister said that the Justice Ministry of Ukraine will appeal to the Council of Europe to declare that Savchenko is being held as a hostage on the territory of Russia and is being kept in inhumane conditions.
   
• Ukrainian border guards registered the fact that six Russian helicopters crossed the Ukrainian air border in the area where the military operation is taking place on July 10. (On July 4, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Andriy Parubiy told a press conference that Ukrainian military forces will down Russian helicopters if they transgress the Ukrainian border after Russian combat helicopters violated the country’s borders on several occasions by crossing into Ukrainian air space on the morning of July 3.)
   
• A prominent Russian ultra-nationalist philosopher told BBC News that war between Russia and Ukraine "is inevitable" and called on President Vladimir Putin to intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine "to save Russia's moral authority." Alexander Dugin is the founder of Russia's Eurasian movement and has been labelled the brains behind Russian President Putin's annexation of Crimea. Dugin believes the "Russian spirit" has been re-awakened by the separatist struggle there, which he calls the "Russian Spring."
   
• (ITAR-TASS) A state of emergency was declared in six Russian regions due to major inflow of refugees from Ukraine.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russia agreed to allow the presence of Ukrainian border guard monitors and OSCE observers at Russian checkpoints, saying that Moscow is “ready to accept Ukrainian border guards in Russia’s Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints on the border between the two states” but added that “it is possible only when a sustainable truce and ceasefire is reached in southeastern Ukraine.”
   
• The European Union agreed to add 11 new names to the list of persons targeted with asset freezes and travel bans over the Ukraine crisis and the sanctions are likely to take effect on Saturday, an EU diplomat said. "The list consists mainly of Ukrainian separatists; there may be one or two Russians there as well."
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich described the EU’s lists of sanctions against Russia as unfriendly acts which cannot but affect Russia’s relations with the European Union.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin wrote in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper that the source of the tragedy in Ukraine is in the process of the so-called European integration, which has turned into a universal method of disintegrating sovereign states.
   
• Warnings from U.S. officials that Russia faces the risk of additional sanctions if it doesn’t stop interfering in eastern Ukraine were mocked by US lawmakers who said President Barack Obama’s administration has failed to deliver.
   
• The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was assisting holding a meeting of the contact group on settling the situation in eastern Ukraine but was not aware when the group might meet.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Ukraine still needs 6-7 billion cubic meters of gas to survive the cold season and expects to buy it from Russia, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said.
   

Governance News

• President Petro Poroshenko said that the events in eastern Ukraine should not be used as an excuse for the absence of real economic reforms in the country. He also said that reforming the civil service system is a priority.
   
• Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk promised that the Cabinet of Ministers will present a two-year plan to restore Ukraine's economy in September.
   

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