Flight MH17 departed from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport en-route to Kuala Lumpur International Airport on July 17, 2014. Three hours into the flight, the Boeing-777 was shot down by Russian proxy forces using a Buk surface-to-air missile above Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
"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.
The U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his wife Jennifer Rauchet seen during the event in Warsaw, Poland, on Feb. 14, 2025. (Marek Antoni Iwaczuk/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Pentagon denied on April 20 that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information about strikes on Yemen in a private Signal chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
The Pentagon's statement came after the New York Times (NYT) reported, citing its sources, that Hegseth shared details of the attacks on Yemen on March 15 in the Signal chat. Hegseth reportedly mentioned the schedule of F/A-18 Hornets flights against the Houthis in Yemen.
It was "essentially" the same information that Hegseth shared in another Signal chat, which was accidentally joined by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, according to the NYT. Goldberg was reportedly invited to the chat by U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on March 11 — four days before the U.S. military strike on Yemen.
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, denied that Hegseth would disseminate sensitive information in the chat, accusing the media of "enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their stories."
"They (the media) relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President's (Donald Trump) agenda," Parnell said. "There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story."
The news highlights the increasing scrutiny surrounding information security among senior officials in the Trump administration. Apart from the attack on Yemen, U.S. officials have also discussed other sensitive topics on Signal, such as peace between Russia and Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported in March.
John Ullyot, the former top Defense Department spokesperson, wrote in an op-ed for Politico that the Pentagon has been in "total chaos" under Hegseth's leadership, even suggesting that the official may not last "much longer."
The story about Hegseth also coincides with the Washington Post (WP) reporting an improper transfer of confidential documents to thousands of federal employees, including potentially classified White House floor plans.
The WP's investigation revealed that employees had accidentally shared a Google Drive folder containing confidential documents with the entire General Services Administration (GSA) staff, which totals over 11,200 people. The GSA provides administrative and technological support to most federal bureaucracies and manages the state real estate portfolio.
The file sharing started at least in early 2021, the beginning of the Biden presidency, and continued into the Trump administration, including one exchange as recently as last week, according to the WP.
Kateryna Hodunova is a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a sports journalist in several Ukrainian outlets and was the deputy chief editor at Suspilne Sport. Kateryna covered the 2022 Olympics in Beijing and was included in the Special Mentions list at the AIPS Sport Media Awards. She holds a bachelor's degree in political journalism from Taras Shevchenko University and a master's degree in political science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Carl Bildt
