Brazilian President Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had appealed to his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, to ask Putin if he was willing to conclude a peace agreement.
Earlier reporting from the Washington Post cited a former Russian official who claimed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, would represent Moscow in the talks.
The Council of Europe on May 14 approved the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russia's top leadership for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, Ukrainian lawmaker Maria Mezentseva reported.
Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Moscow admitted she was in Russian detention the following year.
Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel speaks about the future of the EU-led special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine and its role in bringing Russia to justice.
Turkish officials told Bloomberg that while they don't expect Trump to visit Istanbul, they are not ruling it out, and preparations for any scenario are underway.
Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023 in connection with the activities of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which was co-founded by Golos's legal predecessor, the Golos association.
Ukraine's underground storage facilities are currently using 19.4% of their capacity. Almost 32%, or 2.79 bcm, less gas is available in the storages than in the previous year, according to the estimates.
The majority of Ukrainians, 71%, do not support holding elections before a full peace deal, even in the case of a ceasefire and security guarantees, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on May 14.
"He'd like me to be there, and that's a possibility. ... I don't know that he would be there if I'm not there. We're going to find out," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Qatar, Reuters reported.
Trump has long demanded that NATO allies increase their military spending, previously calling for the alliance to raise its benchmark from 2% to 5% of GDP.
A customs officer walks next to a Maybach at a villa on the lake in Germany on Oct. 5, 2023. Customs and police seized assets allegedly linked to a Russian oligarch during a raid on the villa. (Photo by Christoph Reichwein/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The European Union is considering imposing sanctions on Belarus as a way to close a trade loophole that has allowed Russia to import luxury cars and other banned goods produced in Western countries, the Financial Times reported on May 23.
The EU has already imposed economic sanctions against the Belarusian regime for its involvement in Russia's war against Ukraine. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is a loyal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been accused of abuses of power and political oppression inside his own country.
According to the Financial Times, the newest round of sanctions aims to "minimize the risk of circumvention."
The measures would ban exports of technology and other goods that have military use to and from the country, as well as liquified natural gas. The bloc will also reportedly stop importing diamonds from Minsk.
Luxury cars are one of the major exports that will be stopped by the new sanctions against Minsk. Currently, European car manufacturers can sell products to Belarus but not Russia.
The FT reports that the monthly flow of vehicles and vehicle parts from EU countries to Belarus increased significantly from $50 million in January 2022 to $268 million in January 2024. The export flow is now the largest single element of EU-Belarus trade.
Most notably, the largest export growth to Belarus occurred among cars targeted by EU-Russian sanctions bans. The bloc believes that Belarusian companies have played a major role in smuggling Western cars to Moscow.
Vehicles made by Western luxury car brands such as Rolls-Royce and Maybach entered Russia via Belarusian suppliers in 2022 and 2023.
The Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told FT that "for a Russian to get a car in Belarus is not a problem."
The Lithuanian customs service reportedly struggles with the "complicated" system of inspecting cargo bound for Belarus. Prime Minister Simonyte said the two sanctions regimes have left "very clear holes."
The Prime Minister of Lithuania, as well as Poland's Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, agreed that the only way to close these gaps is to align the two regimes.
Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said the new sanctions were important but did not go far enough. She also criticized the lack of sanctions enforcement mechanisms inside the bloc.
“Sanctions — imposed on Russia or the Belarusian regime — cannot work effectively if they are not synchronized," Tsikhanouskaya said. "Dictators use each other to circumvent sanctions and continue to trade. The Belarusian regime is buying military stuff, luxury cars . . . for Russia....In Europe, there is no mechanism for sanctions enforcement.”
Rachel Amran is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked on the Europe and Central Asia team of Human Rights Watch investigating war crimes in Ukraine. Rachel holds a master's degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Regional Studies from Columbia University.
Abbey Fenbert
