Moscow and Hanoi agreed to negotiate and sign agreements to construct nuclear power plants in Vietnam, the two countries said in a joint statement on May 11.
The sanctions appear to be in response to Russia's rejection of a 30-day ceasefire that the U.K., alongside Ukraine, France, Germany, and Poland, demanded during a visit to Kyiv on May 10.
"We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X. "Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and searched for."
The publications' latest report covers the period of February 24, 2022 to May 8, 2025. Since it was last updated at the end of April, 2,857 additional Russian military personnel have been confirmed killed.
Hungary cancelled a meeting planned for May 12 with a Ukrainian delegation on the rights of national minorities, Hungary's Deputy Foreign Minister said on May 11, amid a deepening spying scandal between the two countries.
Three were injured in Russia's Kursk Oblast when the town of Rylsk was allegedly struck by a missile attack on May 11, local governor Alexander Khinshtein claimed.
This week, the world watched in anticipation for Russia’s Victory Day parade after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented that he could not guarantee the safety of those attending. Meanwhile, the European Union moves one step forward to banning Russian gas from the European continent. It is also revealed this week that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fallen out of step with the White House.
"(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin... doesn't want to have a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the bloodbath. Ukraine should agree to this, immediately," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to to Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting from May 14–16, where he is expected to address the war in Ukraine and push for stronger Allied defense commitments.
EU flags in front of the European Commission building in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 28, 2023. Photo for illustrative purposes. (Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The EU has drafted a proposal that would enable Ukraine to receive profits generated by Russian assets frozen in the EU countries as early as July, Bloomberg reported on March 19, citing the documents.
Ukraine's Western partners and other allies froze around $300 billion in Russian assets at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Roughly two-thirds are held at the Belgium-based financial services company Euroclear.
The proposal, which is to be discussed by EU leaders in Brussels later this week, would involve seizing sanctions-related profits generated since February this year, the Financial Times reported.
Kyiv would get an estimated 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) a year to boost its defense industry and purchase weapons, according to Bloomberg. An unspecified sum of profits generated since Feb. 15 would be allocated to Ukraine bi-annually until the lifting of sanctions via theEuropean Peace Facility, used for defense aid, and through the 50-billion-euro ($54 billion) Ukraine Facility, the outlet said, citing the documents.
Profits generated before February would continue to be immobilized before being transferred to the EU within five years, the draft reportedly read.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists after meeting other EU foreign ministers in Brussels on March 18 that they had reached "a political decision, although not a legal one."
The Guardian reported last week that the European Commission may propose a plan to confiscate 27 billion euros ($29 billion) in profits generated by frozen Russian assets before the meeting of EU prime ministers on March 21.
The debate on using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine's benefit is also taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. Unlike in the EU, U.S. officials have been pushing to seize the assets themselves and send them to Ukraine.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called funneling the funds to Ukraine "necessary and urgent," and American lawmakers are currently discussing the REPO Actas a possible way to fund Kyiv using Russian sovereign assets.
Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He was also volunteering as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukraïner. Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
