The commander of the "Donbass" Battalion, Semen Semenchenko, has called for the imposition of martial law in eastern Ukraine, our Ukrainian Service is reporting (in Ukrainian).
Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, delegated by current President Petro Poroshenko to hold talks with pro-Russian separatists in the country's east, told journalists after a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument to the first Ukrainian Constitution in central Kyiv:
"Once Russia understands that peace is better than war; once Russia realizes that you can't turn Donbas region into, say, another Transdniester, then it will find approaches to calm down all these so-called influential leaders [eds: referring to pro-Russian separatists], because they are representatives of Russia -- let's put it this way."
"What is the point in negotiations with [separatists] today? We will wait till Monday (eds: the end of the extended cease-fire). I expect that by then finally the European Union and the United States of America will realize who is who. They mustn't leave Ukraine one on one [with separatists]."
LATEST from our news desk:
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says that pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have released four OSCE monitors they had held captive for more than one month.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine said on its Facebook page on June 28 that the group had been released after being held for 32 days by the rebels.
They are the second group of captive OSCE monitors to be released in three days, as a group of four OSCE monitors were also freed on June 26 in the Donetsk region.
The release of the monitors was one of the demands made by EU leaders to Russia on June 27 in Brussels as a sign of Moscow's working to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian security forces have been battling the separatist forces. (AFP, ITAR-TASS, Interfax)
This ends our live-blogging for June 28, check back in the morning for the latest developments.