Internal Security News

• Fighting between Ukrainian troops and rebels raged near the crash site of Malaysian flight MH17.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Residents of the Kyivsky, Kirovsky and Petrivsky districts of the city of Donetsk reported sounds of artillery fire, the Donetsk city council said on its website.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) The OSCE monitoring mission has full access to the crash site of the Malaysian airliner in east Ukraine, mission representative Michael Bochurkiv said. Twelve OSCE representatives were working alongside Malaysian experts at the plane’s crash site in the Donetsk Region.

Diplomacy News

• (Interfax Ukraine) According to Interior Ministry advisor Anton Geraschenk, the ministry has information about the involvement of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in the transfer of weapons to members of illegal armed groups in eastern Ukraine, and is checking reports of his participation in the transfer to DPR militants of a Buk air defense missile system, which, according to the Ukrainian side, was used to shot down the Malaysia Airlines plane.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) A second Interior Ministry advisor alleged that Russian special services were planning to kill the leaders of militants as unwanted witnesses. Militants named included Igor Strelkov, Igor Bezler, and one of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, Valeriy Bolotov. "The only one of the terrorist leaders who retains the possibility of returning to Russia is Borodai as the Kremlin's personal political strategist.”
   
• A spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry said of the MH17 crash, “Russia has so far promised much and delivered nothing. Now it’s enough.” Chancellor Angela Merkel called for quick sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, a number of German politicians were calling for the 2018 World Cup to be taken away from Russia as host nation and relocated to another country.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine said that Russian troops have deployed field camps near the Ukrainian border.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said that Kyiv has set up a committee on imposing sanctions on Russia.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Russia will not hold consultations with Ukraine on the text of the Association Agreement with the European Union and will take unilateral action to protect its national economic interests if Kyiv ratifies the treaty, Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev said.
   
• (Interfax Ukraine) The ratification of the agreement on association and a deep and comprehensive free trade area between Ukraine and the European Union is going according to schedule, said deputy chief of the Ukrainian presidential administration Valeriy Chaly. 
   
• (ITAR-TASS) China opposes the international practice of “raising the question of sanctions and threatening to impose them at the first opportunity,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
   
• The remains of some victims of the downed Malaysian Flight 17 arrived in the Netherlands. Dutch investigators only confirmed there were at least 200 bodies transported from the crash site awaiting transportation to the Netherlands, contrasting the previously reported number of 282. A second plane carrying more remains departed Kharkiv for the Netherlands in the afternoon of July 23.
   
• The "black box" flight-data recorders from MH17 arrived in the UK, where they will be examined at the headquarters of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Sources at Farnborough said that it will take about two days to retrieve and decipher data from MH17’s flight recorders.
   
• (RIA Novosti) Russia handed all of its Defense Ministry’s data on the MH17 crash to the European Union, but has seen no reaction yet, Russia’s envoy to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said.
   
• (RIA Novosti) US senators called on President Barack Obama to impose new sanctions against Russia, specifically the energy, finance and defense sectors of Russia’s economy, a letter from the senators addressed to the US president said.
   
• (ITAR-TASS) Kyiv’s actions in the east of Ukraine are “immoral and inhuman”, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

Governance News

• The Ukrainian cabinet, including Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, resigned in order to trigger a new election and remove “Moscow agents”. “When there’s no coalition, and the acting coalition in a parliamentary-presidential republic has collapsed, the government and the prime minister have to resign,” PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk said, according to the UNIAN news agency. “I hereby announce my resignation as a result of the collapse of the coalition and the blocking of government initiatives.”
   
• Verkhovna Rada Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov called on the UDAR and Svoboda parliamentary factions to propose a candidate for a post of interim prime minister, who will head the government until the parliamentary elections.
   
• The Verkhovna Rada registered a bill scheduling the early parliamentary elections on September 28, 2014.
   
•  (Interfax Ukraine) Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Turchynov announced the dissolution of the Ukrainian Communist Party faction in the Verkhovna Rada. A total of 308 criminal inquires were launched against members of the party, said Hanna Onyschenko, the head of the Ukrainian State Registration Service.