"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 still from CCTV footage released by police (National Police)
Four men have been arrested after a Moroccan man was kidnapped, forced to transfer $170,000 in cryptocurrency, and then strangled to death in Kyiv, the capital's police force said on July 29.
In a post on Facebook, police said the 29-year-old victim was abducted from outside his home in the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv around midnight on an unspecified date. People in a nearby house heard screams and saw the man being beaten and bundled into a car.
He was then taken to an abandoned building where he was forced to transfer over the cryptocurrency – which police identified as Bitcoin – to digital wallets belonging to the attackers, who then strangled him and buried his body in a forest.
A police source told the Kyiv Independent the victim was from Morocco.
CCTV footage released by the police appears to show the moment the man was kidnapped.
A police operation subsequently led to the arrests of four men aged 24 to 29. Police allege that in an effort to hide evidence of the crime, the number plates of the car used in the attack were changed afterwards.
All four have been charged with four crimes including murder, robbery and concealment of a crime.
They face up to life imprisonment if found guilty.
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Olena Zashko
