Internal Security News

• An airstrike in the Ukrainian city of Snizhne destroyed an apartment complex and killed up to eleven civilians.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Militants in Donetsk claimed that the airstrike in Snizhne was the work of the Ukrainian military.
   
• Kyiv denied involvement in the airstrike. Andrei Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Defense and Security Council, claimed that "Today at 7 a.m. an unknown plane carried out a bombing attack on Snizhne. The flight can be described only as a cynical provocation.”
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The spokesman for the Ukrainian military operation stated that Ukrainian forces have not used any aircraft since July 14 due to the investigation into the crash of an Antonov An-26 plane. A search-and-rescue operation was underway to locate 6 crewmembers from the downed plane.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The parliament of the self-proclaimed Union of People’s Republics in southeastern Ukraine adopted changes to the constitution of the confederative state and passed a number of important laws, parliament head Oleg Tsarev told ITAR-TASS. “We can now rightly… call our state Novorossiya. This name has been enshrined in the Constitution. Our legislative body is now called the parliament of Novorossiya.”
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The settlements of Metalist, Oleksandrivsk, Bile, and Rozkishne were freed from militants and the Luhansk airport was unblocked.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Representatives of the Maidan “self-defense” forces and the Right Sector vacated seven administrative buildings in downtown Kyiv without use of force, said Kyiv prosecutor Serhiy Yuldashev. 12 administrative buildings remained under the control of the groups.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic claimed to have killed about 100 Ukrainian army personnel and destroyed five tanks, two infantry combat vehicles, two armored personnel carriers, and a mortar battery from July 14-15 during a battle for the Luhansk Airport.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The press service of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic claimed that Ukrainian army units were leaving their positions near east Ukraine’s Luhansk, including Alexandrovka and Schastye, in a move that the press office claimed was “not connected to self-defense fighters’ actions.”
• (ITAR-TASS) At least eight civilians, including a child, were killed in the Ukrainian army’s shelling of Luhansk from July 14-15.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Luhansk Mayor Serhiy Kravchenko declared three days of mourning for civilians killed in the fighting.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) From July 14-15, illegal armed formations attacked counter-terrorism operation forces 16 times and six Ukrainian law enforcers were killed.
   
• (RIA Novosti) A total of 258 servicemen of the Ukrainian government forces had been killed, 922 wounded, and 45 captured since the start of the military operation in the eastern part of the country.
   
• (RIA Novosti) The acting Prosecutor General of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic claimed that Kyiv “most likely” used chemical weapons against residents in southeastern Ukraine.
   
• (RIA Novosti) The self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk halted the broadcasting of all Ukrainian television channels in Donetsk, leaving only Russian broadcasting.
   

Diplomacy News

• (RIA Novosti) The Russian Defense Ministry invited military attaches from 18 countries, including from the US and Germany, to assess the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border that has been hit multiple times by Ukrainian artillery.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Military attaches of the German, French, Italian and Spanish embassies in Moscow accepted an invitation from the country’s Defense Ministry and set off to Russia’s southern Rostov region. The military attaches of seven foreign countries, including Ukraine, refused to travel to the town of Donetsk  on the border with Ukraine.
   
• Ukraine's government said Russian forces may have shot down one of its military airplanes on July 14 amid a European push for peace talks that Germany expects to inch forward.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The Russian Defense Ministry reported a growing number of incidents with shelling of Russian settlements bordering Ukraine. According to Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, “These provocative incidents recur with the lack of official Kiev authorities’ response.”
   
• (ITAR-TASS) An EU source told ITAR-TASS that nine European Union member states were ready to block any attempts to impose new economic sanctions on Russia at a summit on July 16. The countries cited by the source, a diplomat from a Western European country’s permanent representation to the EU, were France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, and Italy, which currently holds the EU presidency.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated that it views the Russian Foreign Ministry's initiative on deploying OSCE monitors only at the Russian checkpoints as a provocation.
   
• Russian President Vladimir Putin told the next president of the European Commission that Russia's ties with the European Union are undergoing "serious tests" but can be improved.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The head of the Moscow Union of Journalists said that the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's plans to initiate a request to the European Union to ban entry for Russian journalists and media representatives are groundless.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Citizens of the Amur Region in Russia’s Far East have sent almost 10 tons of humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees in the Volgograd Region.
   

International Observation Missions

• (Interfax Ukraine) The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that the situation in the central-southern part of the Luhansk region and the central part of the Donetsk region remained volatile.
   
• The military attaches from the OSCE’s eleven member-countries and foreign reporters visited the place hit by artillery fire in the city of Donetsk in Russia's Rostov region.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE Didier Burkhalter was considering the possibility of extending the term of a monitoring mission’s work for another six months upon Ukraine’s request.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed by phone the idea to involve representatives of the OSCE in monitoring of the situation on the Ukrainian-Russian border.
   

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