Previously, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused the Russian intelligence services of orchestrating a May 2024 arson attack on the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw.
Presidential Office chief Andriy Yermak voiced doubt about leading negotiations with anyone from Russia except President Vladimir Putin, implying only the Russian leader can make real decisions.
This includes at least seven people injured in drone attacks overnight on May 12, a date from which Kyiv and its allies put forward a demand for a 30-day unconditional truce, a step that Moscow continues to reject.
"When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs," the Elysee Palace reacted to a fake story pushed by Russia.
The comments came after Trump urged Ukraine to agree to direct negotiations with Russia, which has invited Kyiv to peace talks in Istanbul on May 15, without first agreeing to halt military operations.
A Russian drone hit a civilian freight train in Donetsk Oblast on May 12 and injured its driver, Ukrainian Railways said amid Kyiv's calls for a ceasefire.
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.
Robert Fico during an interview in Bratislava, Slovakia, on April 25, 2023. (Michaela Nagyidaiova/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Slovakia's SMER (Direction) party led by former president Robert Fico has gained a narrow victory in the Slovakian parliamentary elections on Sept. 30, with almost 100% of the votes counted as of Oct. 1.
Campaigning on a pro-Russian, populist platform, and promising to end aid to Ukraine if elected, Fico and SMER received 22.9% of the vote, besting the main competitor, the liberal, pro-Western Progressive Slovakia (PS) party, who came in second place with 17.9%.
As neither gained an outright victory, SMER will have to form a government with one or more other parties in a coalition. Analysts believe it is possible SMER will attempt to join together with the left-wing HLAS party that split away from SMER in 2020.
HLAS came in third place with 14.7% of the vote. Another possible coalition member would be the openly pro-Russian ultranationalist Slovak National Party, who received 5.6%.
There are seven parties that gained more than the 5% threshold for having representation in parliament, so the process of coalition building may be complicated.
Fico was previously the prime minister of Slovakia from 2006 to 2010. He was re-elected in 2012 but resigned in 2018 following a political crisis sparked by the murder of the investigative journalist Jan Kuciak.
Before he was killed, Kuciak had investigated corruption scandals in Fico's party and alleged ties between the Italian mafia and figures in Fico's network.
In addition to regularly remarking that he would stop providing Ukraine with aid if elected, Fico also opposes EU sanctions against Russia and wants Slovakia, a NATO member, to block Ukraine from joining the alliance.
Fico has also repeated the myth that the war in Ukraine began as a civil war, a narrative Russia used to try to conceal its involvement in Donbas.
On Aug. 30, he told a crowd of supporters that the war in Ukraine began "when the Ukrainian Nazis and fascists started to murder Russian citizens in Donbas and Luhansk," repeating Russian propaganda.
Fico’s primary opponent Michal Simecka, who leads PS, promised to maintain support for Ukraine. He stressed that a reversal of Slovakia’s current position of providing support would put the nation at odds with other EU and NATO countries, and could cause Slovakia to become isolated.
Francis Farrell
