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UML is a widely used notation, and formalizing its semantics is an important issue. Here, we concentrate on formalizing UML state machines, used to express the dynamic behaviour of software systems. We propose a formal operational semantics covering all features of the latest version (2.4.1) of UML state machines specification. We use labelled transition systems as the semantic model, so as to use automatic verification techniques like model checking. Furthermore, our proposed semantics includes synchronous and asynchronous communications between state machines. We implement our approach in USM²C, a model checker supporting editing, simulation and automatic verification of UML state machines. Experiments show the effectiveness of our approach.