Erdogan told Macron that international cooperation is critical for initiating peace negotiations and the "sensitive implementation" of Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction processes, the Turkish Presidency reported.
The assault began around 2 a.m. on May 11, with Russian forces deploying 108 Shahed-type attack drones and decoy UAVs from multiple directions, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
"Think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that will be saved as this never ending 'bloodbath' hopefully comes to an end... I will continue to work with both sides to make sure that it happens."
U.S. State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce called for "concrete proposals from both sides" in order for Washington to "move forward" in peace negotiations.
"If they speak to each other in Russian, he doesn't know what they are saying," one Western official told NBC News. Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, called Witkoff's approach "a very bad idea."
Tougher sanctions "should be applied to (Russia's) banking and energy sectors, targeting fossil fuels, oil, and the shadow fleet," the leaders of Ukraine, the U.K., France, Germany, and Poland said in a joint statement.
"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.
While serving as a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, called the full-scale war "a true invasion, imperialist in nature, where Russia seeks to conquer territory for reasons of power."
Iryna Venediktova the General Prosecutor of Ukraine is seen during a meeting in Mariupol on June 24, 2020. (don.gp.gov.ua)
The Supreme Court threw out a Hr 150,000 ($5,500) libel lawsuit filed by Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova against online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda and the Anti-Corruption Action Center, Ukrainska Pravda reported on Dec. 21, citing the ruling.
Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court and the Kyiv Court of Appeal had sided with Venediktova but the Supreme Court overturned their decisions.
The Supreme Court cited the European Court of Human Rights and argued that the limits on criticism of publicly exposed persons are much broader than for ordinary people.
"The Supreme Court fully agreed with our arguments,” said Ukrainska Pravda’s lawyer, Oleksandr Lytvyn. “The information is in the public interest and is an evaluation. We did not claim that Venediktova committed any crime, as her lawyer wrote. Also, the head of the prosecutor’s office had no right to claim compensation for non-pecuniary damages.”
Venediktova sued Ukrainska Pravda and the anti-corruption watchdog in 2020, demanding they retract information in an article about the growing influence of then-Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Experts from the Anti-Corruption Action Center wrote the article and Ukrainska Pravda published it.
Specifically, Venediktova referred to the statement that her husband, police official Denys Kolesnyk, influenced the State Investigation Bureau’s human resource policy when she headed the bureau in 2019-2020. Ukrainska Pravda reported that Venediktova had appointed Ruslan Biryukov as an adviser due to Kolesnyk’s influence.
This is not the only recent clash between Venediktova and independent media.
Brian Bonner, the ex-chief editor of the Kyiv Post, told the Ukrainian Weekly in November that after the Kyiv Post ran a critical story about Venediktova in 2020, he was invited to her office where he faced “pressure.” Venediktova had also threatened the Kyiv Post with a lawsuit.
The Kyiv Post ran another critical article about Venediktova on Sept. 3, after which Bonner said she opened criminal cases against the newspaper’s owner, Odesa tycoon Adnan Kivan. The cases were later closed, he said.
Kivan shut down the Kyiv Post and fired all of its staff on Nov. 8. The newspaper was re-launched a month later but not a single member of the former editorial team joined the renewed Kyiv Post.
In response, Venediktova stated that she never pressured anybody or even met Kivan, who has also denied allegations of pressure.
The former editorial team of the Kyiv Post launched the Kyiv Independent on Nov. 11.
Oleg Sukhov is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is a former editor and reporter at the Moscow Times. He has a master's degree in history from the Moscow State University. He moved to Ukraine in 2014 due to the crackdown on independent media in Russia and covered war, corruption, reforms and law enforcement for the Kyiv Post.
