"According to the participants of the performances, their goal is to remind the civilized world of the barbaric actions of Moscow, which for many years and decades has systematically violated international law," a source in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) told the Kyiv Independent.
"I have great hope that an agreement for a ceasefire in Ukraine will be reached this weekend," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on May 9, shortly before traveling to Kyiv alongside the leaders of France, Poland, and the U.K.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk will arrive in Kyiv early on May 10.
The United States embassy in Kyiv on May 9 issued a warning that Russia could launch "a potentially significant" attack in the coming days, despite Putin's self-declared Victory Day "truce."
The sanctioned oil tankers have transported over $24 billion in cargo since 2024, according to Downing Street. The U.K. has now sanctioned more shadow fleet vessels than any other country.
Washington and its partners are considering additional sanctions if the parties do not observe a ceasefire, with political and technical negotiations between Europe and the U.S. intensifying since last week, Reuters' source said.
The Kyiv Independent’s contributor Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke spent a day with a mobile team from the State Emergency Service in Nikopol in the south of Ukraine as they responded to relentless drone, artillery, and mortar strikes from Russian forces just across the Dnipro River. Nikopol is located across from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.
Demonstrators shout slogans as they march behind a banner that reads "Ukrainians will resist" in the colours of the Ukraine's national flag during a rally in Kyiv on February 12, 2022, held to show unity amid US warnings of an imminent Russian invasion. - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that warnings of an imminent Russian attack on his country were stoking "panic" and demanded to see firm proof of a planned invasion. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP) (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to invade Ukraine, his stated goal was to free Ukraine from the “neo-Nazis” that had supposedly taken the country hostage and prevented the Ukrainian people from choosing a common future with Russia. He expected Ukrainians to welcome Russian troops, grateful for their liberation. As we have seen, this was a fantasy.
Participants express being more proud of their country and military than ever before. Many of those interviewed are Russian-speakers, and they say that they have never experienced the oppression that Putin claims is happening. They despise Putin and call the Russians who have entered their country “invaders,” “monsters,” and “inhuman.”
Far from welcoming the Russian invaders, an anonymous university student from Odesa, a seaside city in southern Ukraine with a pre-war population of roughly one million, writes: “I hate Putin and all Russians responsible for this. On the other hand, I feel a surge of pride for my nation. Russian soldiers are not people, they are monsters.”
Putin claimed that the Ukrainian government was committing genocide against Russian-speakers in southern and eastern Ukraine and that they needed to be protected. However, this student from Odesa writes, “Ukrainians do not want to be saved by Russia. We were free, we are free, and we will be free. We were allowed to speak both the Ukrainian language and the Russian language.”
Putin has also said that Ukrainians were prevented from choosing to be with Russia. However, it is clear from these interviews that Ukrainians have chosen: they are fighting for their future as a European nation.
For example, Hanna from Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine with a pre-war population of 486,000, writes, “We just want to be free, to be part of the European community - and they are bombing us for this! It’s nonsense that this is happening now, in the 21st century, in a European country.”
Dmytro from Luhansk, a Russian-occupied city in eastern Ukraine, writes: “I want the West to know we suffer for the aspiration to become a fully-democratic liberal country, to have the ability to develop, to have control over our politicians, so they will finally understand that they are not an aristocracy but managers. That we have the full right to have our language, our culture."
These interviews show that Putin’s actions have united the Ukrainian nation like never before. Dmytro from Luhansk writes: “Lastly, I, a half-Russian, Russian-speaker from Luhansk, Putin's perfect primary audience, could honestly say: Vladimir Vladimirovich, go f**k yourself. F**k you and thank you for your help to unite our nation, so it could wake up and find out that there is no Soviet Union anymore. From now on, we will live our own way.”
According to an anonymous student from Odesa: “I used to think that there was something wrong with Ukrainians as Western countries did not want us in the EU and NATO. I am proud to be a Ukrainian now. I am proud of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I cannot imagine how brave and fearless a person must be to resist the Russian monsters. Glory to Ukraine!”
Also, President Volodymyr Zelensky's approval ratings have increased from about 50% to 93% since early February. Reportedly 98% of respondents now support the activities of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and 88% believe that Ukraine will be able to win against Russia.
Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine has had the opposite effect that he intended. Ukrainians are more united and proud of their nation than ever before, and they despise the Russian troops that have invaded their country. They are certain about their European future and they are more determined than ever to fight for their freedom from Russia.
Lucy Minicozzi-Wheeland is a contributor and news intern at the Kyiv Independent, working with the support of an Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies Graduate Internship Grant. She is also earning her master’s degree in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia at Harvard University. She is writing her master’s thesis about the war in Ukraine and she specializes in Ukrainian and Georgian studies. Lucy spent the 2019-2020 academic year serving as a Fulbright Student Researcher in Odesa, Ukraine, where she worked with prominent Ukrainian NGOs and universities such as the Odesa Center for Nonproliferation and Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
