"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.
A photo of Luhansk Oblast taken in Lysychansk shared by the region's governor on July 3, 2022. (Serhiy Haidai/Telegram)
A car bomb has killed a Moscow-appointed official in the occupied Luhansk Oblast city of Starobilsk, occupation authorities said on April 1.
Valeriy Chaika died after a homemade explosive device was planted on his car, the head of the Starobilsk occupational administration, Vladimir Chernev, said in a post on Telegram.
“Our comrade is dead,” he added.
Russia's Investigative Committee posted a picture of a burned-out SUV on the street in Starobilsk and said an investigation had been launched into the “terrorist act.”
"The circumstances of the incident and the people involved in the commission of the crime are being established," it added.
Russian officials, their proxies, and collaborators have been routinely targeted in both occupied parts of Ukraine and in Russia. Kyiv does not typically comment on the attacks.
In November, a car belonging to a Russian policeman was blown up in occupied Mariupol.
Mikhail Filiponenko, a Russian proxy official and former military commander in occupied Luhansk, was killed by a car bomb on Nov. 8.
Earlier in October, Vladimir Malov, a member of Russia's ruling United Russia party, was killed in a car bomb explosion in the occupied city of Nova Kakhovka in Kherson Oblast.
The Washington Post released an article on Oct. 23 alleging that Ukrainian intelligence services were behind a number of high-profile assassinations of targets inside Russia.Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) refused to comment on the article, saying that it would only be possible to discuss details regarding its special operations after Ukraine's victory over Russia.
Chris York is news operations editor at the Kyiv Independent. Before joining the team, he was head of news at the Kyiv Post. Previously, back in Britain, he spent nearly a decade working for HuffPost UK. He holds an MA in Conflict, Development, and Security from the University of Leeds.
