Internal Security News

• International observers turned back again after making another attempt to reach the site where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down in eastern Ukraine, and a government official said the area near the zone had been mined by pro-Russian separatists who control it.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Ukraine’s army is not planning to use military force to restore control over the Malaysian Boeing crash area in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Ukraine’s Vice-Premier Vladimir Groisman said.
   
• The Ukrainian army said it had seized the key town of Avdiivka near the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, as fighting raged in the east.
   
•  (Interfax Ukraine) One hundred residents were injured and 27 killed, including four children, in Horlivka, Donetsk region, on July 27 – 29.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Ukrainian diplomats were working on the recognition of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk "people's republics" as terrorist organizations by international organizations and foreign states.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has released satellite images that it claims confirm the shelling of Ukrainian settlements with Russian Grad multiple rocket launchers from Ukrainian territory.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Separatists claimed to have put out of action 125 armored vehicles of the Ukrainian army near the city of Shakhtyorsk in the country’s east.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) An attempt was made to blow up a bridge in Kharkiv region on July 29.
   

Diplomacy News

• (ITAR-TASS) Russia will soon submit to international organizations its proposals to organize a humanitarian mission for Ukraine’s embattled southeast, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. The proposals will be handed to the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Ukraine had plunged into a civil war.
   
• Russia became more isolated than it has been at any time since the end of the Cold War after new, hard-hitting sanctions were announced by the European Union and the United States, U.S. officials said. The EU Council adopted further EU restrictive measures in view of the situation in Ukraine, adding eight persons and three entities to the list of those subject to an asset freeze and a visa ban.
   
• Ukraine welcomed the adoption of new EU and U.S. sanctions against Russia.
   
• (RIA Novosti) EU sanctions against Russia’s energy sector will inevitably lead to a price hike on the European energy market, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
   
• Citing Russia's stalled growth rate and a flow of foreign capital out of Moscow, U.S. and European officials hope a new round of sanctions targeting energy and defense entities, as well as major banks, will deepen Russia's economic pain even further and force President Vladimir Putin to end provocations in Ukraine.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Russia will face complete isolation if it invades Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russia will do its utmost to start the negotiations process in Ukraine and end the bloodshed, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Moscow is concerned by reports that Ukraine’s government troops have used ballistic missiles against “independence supporters” in the country’s east, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Russia is waging an undeclared war on Ukraine, punishing the country for its European choice, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said. "In my opinion, the world faces the biggest threat since the Cuban crisis of 1962," he said.
   

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