IMF announces further delay in bailout:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that it has not yet decided to resume a bailout of Ukraine, which was halted over corruption concerns last year.
IMF spokesman William Murray said on July 28 that the IMF's executive board would not vote on a release of the next portion of Ukraine's $17.5 billion bailout package until at least mid-August, after the board returns from a two-week break.
The Washington-based organization earlier said that a review on unlocking the next loan tranche was nearing completion and it could be considered in July.
Since August 2015, Ukraine has received no new IMF disbursements from the bailout package approved in April last year.
Ukraine is currently awaiting the next $1.6 billion tranche from the bailout, intended to help stabilize the country, engulfed in a military conflict with Russia-backed separatists for more than two years.
Kyiv has been struggling to implement deep structural reforms, including rooting out endemic corruption, to meet conditions attached to IMF assistance.
The IMF has been frustrated by the slow passage of reforms in Ukraine. Kyiv has so far received $6.7 billion of the IMF's loan package. (AFP, Reuters)
Kyiv downplays Trump's rethinking of Russian claim to Crimea:
By RFE/RL
Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations has downplayed a comment by U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that he would consider recognizing Russia's widely condemned annexation of Crimea.
"Mr. Trump is not the president of the United States, at least not yet, " Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko said in New York on July 28 as he urged the UN Security Council to declare a recent Russian move to incorporate Crimea into southern Russia "null and void" and once again reaffirm that the peninsula belongs to Ukraine.
"There are the well-known decisions of the United Nations" condemning the annexation as illegal in 2014, he said. "I'm pretty sure that any U.S. government will pay full respect to those decisions."
Yelchenko was responding to comments by Trump on July 27 that appeared to create an opening for Russia by leaving open the question of whether he would recognize Crimea as Russian territory and lift sanctions on Moscow.
"We'll be looking at that," Trump said at a news conference. "Yeah, we'll be looking."
Yelchenko said: "If this is his opinion as a candidate for the president of the United States, well, this is his opinion. I hope and I'm almost sure that this opinion will change."
The Obama White House said on July 28 that there was no change in its stance on Crimea's annexation, which led to several rounds of sanctions on Russia.
"The United States has been very direct about our view that the attempted annexation of Crimea by Russia is a flagrant violation, an egregious violation of international norms," spokesman Josh Earnest said. "And it's not a violation that the United States is prepared to tolerate." (w/ dpa, AFP, Reuters, AP)
Russia slams Google's use of Ukrainian spellings for Crimean places:
U.S. tech giant Google has come under fire in Russia for using Ukraine's "decommunized" spellings for street names in parts of Crimea, which Moscow annexed illegally from Ukraine in 2014.
Google Maps has adopted Ukrainian versions of some 900 place names in Crimea in line with a "decommunization" law Kyiv passed last year.
"I think it's a short-sighted policy," Russian Minister of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov told Rossia 24 television on July 28, adding that he hoped "the mistake is corrected."
"If Google pays so little attention to Russian law and the names of Russian localities then it will not be able to do business effectively on Russian territory," Nikiforov warned.
Sergei Aksyonov, the head of Crimea's Russia-controlled government, accused Google Maps of producing a "propaganda product rather than real maps" by using Ukrainian transliterations for the area.
A Russian spokesman for Google said the firm was working on ensuring that the Russian version of the localities would be incorporated into the Russian-language version of Google Maps.
"We are actively working on giving [localities] their old names in the Russian version of Google Maps," the spokesman told the financial daily RBK. (AFP, Interfax)
This ends our live blogging for July 28. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.