Internal Security News

• Fighting intensified in southeast Ukraine following the end of Poroshenko’s ceasefire. At least five Ukrainian soldiers and hundreds of separatists had been killed in 24 hours on July 1-2, according to Security Council spokesman Andriy Lisenko. 21 Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded. A Ukrainian military plane came under fire from rebels using portable anti-aircraft weapons, though no casualties were reported.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Ukraine’s Defense Minister said that a total of 29 Ukrainian troops had been captured by illegal armed groups in southeast Ukraine to date.
   
• Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister stated that a rift is emerging among separatist forces in Donetsk region. Gerashchenko was speaking in reference to the storming by rebel fighters of the Interior Ministry headquarters in central Donetsk on July 1. A conflict ensued during the operation, with some rebels wanting to “fully block the work of the police” and others concerned that this may turn public opinion against them. “There’s a certain balance there, when one half of the terrorists understands that you cannot liquidate the police, and the other half, mostly under orders from Moscow, carries out the instructions of the Russian army or FSB.”
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council decided that it would be inappropriate to impose martial law on the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
   
• The head of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Luhansk, Valeriy Bolotov, said that Hromadske TV journalist Anastasia Stanko and her cameraman Illia Bezkorovainy have been released. Stanko and Bezkorovainy were captured on July 1.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Both parties to the Ukrainian conflict violate human rights, but militiamen do not shell refugees and civilian facilities, Russian Foreign Ministry ombudsman for human rights, democracy and the rule of law Konstantin Dolgov said.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The mayor of Donetsk said that the situation in southeastern Ukraine was exacerbated after the resumption of the anti-terrorist operation. "Tensions persist in the city. The situation worsened after the ceasefire had been called off. DPR supporters seized the regional department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry yesterday… One police officer died and 20 people, among them five civilians, sustained wounds of various degrees.”
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Members of illegal armed groups opened fire at the village of Stanytsia Luhanska, which resulted in civilian casualties.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) As a result of combat operations in eastern Ukraine, the city of Sloviansk and part of the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region suffered a power outage.
   
• Kyiv reported mortar fire on the Novoazovsk border post in the Donetsk region on the Ukrainian-Russian border in the early morning of July 2.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Militants in Donetsk and Luhansk began evacuating from the building of Donetsk Regional State Administration, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has reported. "[The] terrorists' ... aim is to withdraw from the city all of their accumulated financial resources and weapons."
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Ukrainian forces took control of the villages of Stary Karavan and Brusivka in the Donetsk region.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Valeriy Chaly said that Kyiv is ready to continue consultations with the involvement of the contact group on the settlement of the situation in Ukraine's east.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Two hundred Ukrainian servicemen and law enforcement personnel died and 619 people had been wounded in eastern Ukraine since the anti-terrorist operation started.
   

Diplomacy News

• (ITAR-TASS) The foreign ministers of Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine met in Berlin in a bid to “attempt again to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Moscow strongly demanded that Kyiv abandon shelling civilian towns and villages and return to a real ceasefire.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev blamed Ukrainian President Poroshenko for deaths of people in Ukraine’s embattled southeast and warned that it will be hard for Moscow to develop relations with Kiev in the current conditions.
   
• Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said a "full-scale" gas crisis between Moscow and Kyiv will develop by autumn, after Gazprom last month cut off gas supplies to Ukraine over unpaid bills.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry assured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that Washington and its allies will continue to put pressure on Russia in the Ukrainian question.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Kerry, in a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, demanded again that Russia stop supporting separatists in southeastern Ukraine.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) During this phone call, Lavrov told Kerry that Poroshenko’s decision not to extend the truce regime undermined earlier agreements reached by the Russian, German, French and Ukrainian leaders and unleashed a new spiral of bloodshed with unpredictable consequences.
   
• Russia closed the border with Ukraine at three locations, blocking off escape routes for separatists looking to return to Russia, according to a statement from Ukrainian Security Council spokesman Andriy Lisenko. Crossings have been closed at Gukovo, Donetsk and Novoshakhtinsk in Rostov oblast. They had previously been allowing rebel fighters free access.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russian FM Sergei Lavrov expressed concern about the lack of foreign media attention given to Ukrainian refugees.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Moscow demanded that Kyiv  stop firing on peaceful cities if it is still able to consider the consequences of its criminal policy.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said that Washington is not interested in active European participation in settling the Ukrainian crisis. “Relations seem to be cooling, not only with European capitals: we sense the influence of American partners, who are not interested in the European Union being more actively involved in dealing with the Ukrainian tragedy.”
   
• (RIA Novosti) The Russian Investigative Committee recognized 2,700 victims in criminal cases in the Ukrainian crisis.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) President of the European Commission Manuel Barroso said that the EU understood the decision of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko not to renew the ceasefire.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russian Deputy Security Council Secretary Evgeny Lukyanov alleged that one of the main political goals of the Ukrainian "Euro-Maidan" movement is the further expansion of NATO to the east.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Lukyanov also asserted that advisors from the United States are actively working in Ukraine and developing Kyiv’s strategy.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russian Instigative Committee official spokesman Vladimir Markin said that the current governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Region, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, is responsible for the death of Anatoly Klyan, the cameraman from Russia’s Channel-1 television station that was fatally shot in Ukraine.
   

International Observation Missions

• The OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly adopted the Baku Declaration, which urges respect for the principles of the inviolability of borders and condemns the occupation of Ukrainian territory.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The Swiss Ambassador in Moscow thanked the Russian Orthodox Church for assistance in freeing observers of the OSCE in Ukraine.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Utter failure in efforts to isolate Russia came as one of the main results of the latest OSCE Parliamentary Assembly session, the chairman of the State Duma's Committee on International Affairs, Aleksei Pushkov, said.
   

Governance News

• (Interfax Ukraine) The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, voted to work without a parliamentary recess this summer.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian parliamentary factions of the Batkivschyna and Svoboda parties demanded that President Petro Poroshenko submit the association agreement with the EU to the Verkhovna Rada for ratification without delay.
   
• The Ukrainian government planned to seek parliamentary approval on July 3 for a possible state of emergency in the energy sector which would empower it to dictate to gas companies, including private ones, to whom they should supply gas and for how much.
   

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