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.
Deputy Justice Minister Iryna Mudra. (Justice Ministry)
Already this year, Ukraine could receive $4 billion from Russian assets frozen by the EU and the Group of Seven (G7) countries, Deputy Justice Minister Iryna Mudra told Forbes Ukraine in an interview published on Feb. 14.
The sum could go up to $15-$18 billion over the next four years, she added.
Western countries and other partners immobilized around $300 billion of the Russian Central Bank's assets at the start of the full-scale invasion. Since then, Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv have discussed legal ways of channeling these funds to aid Ukraine's reconstruction efforts but have yet to come to a definitive conclusion.
Roughly two-thirds of Russian assets are held in the EU, mainly at the Brussels-based securities depository Euroclear.
The EU has been hesitant to confiscate Russian assets outright, fearing legal pitfalls and possible retribution by Russia. Instead, the EU proposed a plan last December to seize about 15 billion euros ($16 billion) in projected profits generated by frozen assets of Russia's Central Bank and transfer them to Ukraine.
According to Mudra, the European Commission has already made the decision to concentrate frozen Russian assets in one institution, which is a necessary first step. The EU recently agreed to isolate the immobilized Russian funds, possibly paving the way for the revenue to be eventually redirected to Ukraine.
As a second step, the EU must introduce legislation that would enable the bloc to transfer the money to Ukraine, Mudra added.
"We had talks with representatives of Belgium, which currently chairs the EU Council. There is cautious optimism that the EU Council will make a decision by the end of June 2024," the deputy minister said.
Ukraine would receive the funds through the Ukraine Facility mechanism, under which the EU allocated 50 billion euros ($54 billion) to Kyiv in four-year funding.
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.
Andrew Kosenko
