"I am grateful for the support and the readiness at the highest level to promote diplomacy," President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the phone conservation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We share the same view on the need for a ceasefire."
The convictions mark a significant development in Britain's efforts to counter Russian intelligence operations amid heightened tensions stemming from Moscow's war against Ukraine and repeated Kremlin threats toward Kyiv's allies.
According to the Verkhovna Rada's website, Ukraine completed the ratification of the U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement on May 12. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the deal.
"I myself have heard relatives talking: our village is being attacked, let's roll the car out of the garage, maybe they will shell it — at least we will get money. The car is old, we can't sell it," Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
The new tranche brings total recent EU defense support for Ukraine to 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion), marking a significant expansion of European efforts to boost Kyiv's defense industry.
"Russia is ready for negotiations without any preconditions," Putin claimed in an address marking the end of the three-day Victory Day ceasefire. He invited Ukraine to begin talks in Istanbul on May 15.
Both men face charges related to terrorism and espionage. Daniil B. was detained in Lithuania, where he is in temporary custody, while Oleksandr V. remains at large in Russia.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine and its allies discussed tougher sanctions against Russia's banking sector, central bank, and energy industry.
"We are ready for all options. But of course, we are separately waiting for a response on the ceasefire," a source close to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Kyiv Independent.
Former Russian Deputy Prime Minister and ex-сhair of space agency Roscosmos Dmitrii Rogozin was wounded along with top proxy official Vitalii Khotsenko in an attack on a restaurant outside occupied Donetsk on the evening of Dec. 21.
According to Russian media outlets as well as Rogozin himself, two people were reportedly killed, including a bodyguard, and five more injured in the attack on the Shesh-Besh restaurant, located in the middle of a forested area just south of the city limits.
Rogozin, who turned 59 on the day of the attack, was hospitalized after a small piece of shrapnel entered his back, “centimeters away from the spine,” according to his personal Telegram account. The exact nature of Khotsenko’s wound is unknown, but Russian state media agency TASS reported that he is in a stable condition with no threat to life.
Rogozin, as well as Russian-installed Donetsk proxy head Denis Pushilin, have accused Ukraine of the attack, saying it was a deliberate strike carried out by Ukrainian heavy artillery.
“Someone leaked the information, and around 7:45 p.m. there were several high-precision hits, including in the place where we were directly located,” Rogozin wrote. “They hit me with 120mm or 155mm caliber rounds. The investigation will determine where and who.”
Damage to the Shesh-Besh restaurant in Donetsk after the attack that killed two and wounded Dmitrii Rogozin and Vitalii Khotsenko on Dec. 21, 2022. (Telegram)
As reported by Interfax Russia, an unnamed assistant of Rogozin specified the weapon likely used, naming the French CAESAR 155mm self-propelled howitzer.
Ukrainian officials have not commented on the attack.
However, the precision of the strike, on a location hundreds of meters away from any built-up area or piece of infrastructure, suggests that the likelihood of a targeted hit on either or both of the two men is high.
In a mocking Telegram post, political advisor and former Deputy Interior Minister Anton Herashchenko called the attack a “‘birthday present’ from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.” Herashchenko does not in any way represent the official Ukrainian position.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has openly targeted Russian generals, 14 of which are reported to have been killed, mostly in the early months of the war.
Targets sometimes include Russia’s highest-ranking military officials, as evidenced by an April 29 strike on a facility near Izium, Kharkiv Oblast where Russian Chief of the General Staff Valerii Gerasimov was located.
According to an investigation published by the New York Times in December, Washington had requested Kyiv to cancel the strike, but Ukrainian officials said the message came too late, though Gerasimov survived.
Widely understood to have fallen out of the Kremlin’s favor when he was dismissed from his post as head of Roscosmos on July 15, Rogozin no longer serves in an official capacity in Russia.
After his dismissal, Rogozin came to occupied Donbas to serve as the head of the obscure military training group known as “Tsar’s Wolves”, which, according to Russian media, “trains fighters in the Donbas for reconnaissance and assault operations.”
Dmitrii Rogozin poses with Russian fighters at a training ground of the Tsar's Wolves in occupied Donetsk Oblast in autumn 2022 (Telegram)
36-year-old Khotsenko, who had served in different bureaucratic posts in the Russian Federation for the last decade, had never lived in Donetsk until he was appointed to his high-ranking proxy position in June 2022.
Neither fits the strict definition of a serving member of the occupying military, but both play a very direct role in Russia’s war.
Speaking on a livestream on the Khodorkovsky Live Youtube Channel on Sept. 17 after a series of strikes on proxy officials in occupied Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podoliak said that such people are “completely lawful military targets.”
“What is happening here is part of the overall work of de-occupying these regions,” he said.
As Deputy Prime Minister of Russia who founded the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry in 2012, Rogozin has previously been directly responsible for the modernization of Russia’s military.
In June, Rogozin was banned from Twitter after publicly calling for the complete extermination of the Ukrainian people “once and for all.”
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Francis Farrell, cheers for reading this article. I grew up on the other side of the world, but in Ukraine I have found a home unlike any other. Just like with so many of our readers, I understand that you don't have to be from near here to realize how important Ukraine's struggle is for freedom and human rights all over the world. The Kyiv Independent's mission is to lead the way in continuing to bring the best homegrown, English-language coverage of this war, even if the rest of the world's attention starts to fade. Please consider supporting our reporting.
Francis Farrell is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has worked as managing editor at the online media project Lossi 36, and as a freelance journalist and documentary photographer. He has previously worked in OSCE and Council of Europe field missions in Albania and Ukraine, and is an alumnus of Leiden University in The Hague and University College London. The Kyiv Independent received a grant from the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust to support Farrell's front-line reporting for the year 2024-2025.
Francis is the co-author of War Notes, the Kyiv Independent's weekly newsletter about the war.
