The Ukrainian military carried out an airstrike on Lugansk. As a result, the building of the Lugansk RSA was damaged, unmanaged missiles (presumably UAMS-8 or a similar cluster munition) also hit the square and the parking lot in front of it, killing 8 civilians (3 men and 5 women); 28 people were wounded by shrapnel, the majority of them were taken straight to the intensive therapy and some of them died in hospitals. The Ukrainian side stated that it hadn’t been an airstrike but an explosion due to an inept launch of a MANPADS missile at Ukrainian planes by the militia.

The Ukrainian army started another assault of Slavyansk. Arsen Avakov reported that the militia’s checkpoints in the area of Semyonovka had been destroyed. Battles also were fought in the area of the township of Tsaritsyno. The Ukrainian military took Red Liman under their control. The rebels reported another downed Su-25.

The rebels managed to seize a number of Ukrainian border control points, such as Stanitsa Luganskaya, Krasnodon, Biryukovo, Sverdlovsk, Dyakovo, Krasnopartizansk, Dolzhansky and Red Tomb.

An aerial surveillance plane AN-30B of the Air Force of Ukraine was downed above Slavyansk by a shot from MANPADS; five members of the crew were killed and three of them managed to leave the plane. Due to the fightings high-voltage lines near Slavyansk were damaged, which left a part of the town and 40 localities in the Slavyansk region without electricity. Repairing them became almost impossible due to the heavy fightings. Several days later the situation in Slavyansk approached a humanitarian catastrophe as there was no electricity in the town, the water supply was stopped, the communication with other localities was disrupted, petrol stations were destroyed and mobile telephony worked intermittently. Due to the blockade of roads leading to the town there was stopped food and medicine delivery, pensions, salaries and social payments hadn’t been paid since mid-May and it became practically impossible for residents of the town to leave it because the Ukrainian military kept shelling civil transport, even with the word “Children” written on it.

The LPR addressed to the Russian Federation as well as to 14 other countries with a request to recognise its independence.

By order of the Ukrainian authorities the military carried out an anti-terroristic operation in Mariupol, which resulted in tens of its residents arrested on suspicion of ‘sympathy for the terrorists’. The DPR activists had to leave the town. The Ukrainian military went on the offensive from the south of the DPR and the north of the LPR in an attempt to regain their control over the border in order to isolate the People’s Republics from Russia.

The Ukrainian authorities allowed the National Guard to search any flat that seemed suspicious to the latter without a warrant. Also there were expanded powers of representatives of the SCS civil services and the Foreign Intelligence Service. They were given a right to arrest, by using their own means, persons whose actions allegedly threatened the life and health of people and neutralise them.

Oleg Tsaryov was elected the speaker of the Parliament (the Head of the State) of the Union of the People’s Republics of Novorossia; there was also approved the Constitution of the Union. The European Union expanded the list of sanctions imposed on Russia after the Crimean referendum and the Crimea’s accession to the RF, including in it 15 persons and 18 organisations, 9 of which were accused of undermining territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. In particular, in the list there was included the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Federative State Novorossia, the Lugansk Guard, the Army of the South-East, the Militia of Donbass and the battalion Vostok (East).