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.
Peter Szijjarto's announcement came after Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) allegedly dismantled a Hungarian military intelligence network operating in Zakarpattia Oblast.
Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister, and Robert Fico, Slovakia's prime minister, during a roundtable meeting at a European Union (EU) leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 26, 2023. (Simon Wohlfahrt/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Hungarian government plans to ask its citizens whether they support Ukraine's potential EU membership in its upcoming questionnaire sent via mail, known as the "National Consultation," the country's Foreign Ministry's State Secretary Tamas Menczer said on Nov. 11.
Yet even the announcement itself appeared to nudge the citizens to respond negatively. In a 40-second video message shared on his Facebook page, Menczer presented the potential accession of Ukraine in a negative light, saying that it would mean that "the war would be brought into (our) community, and a significant part of the EU resources would also go to Ukraine."
Anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian statements are common for the Hungarian leadership.
Menczer's video message comes as his country's Prime Minister Viktor Orban urges the EU not to start membership talks with Ukraine, in spite of the recent recommendation from the European Commission. His government has been campaigning against Ukraine throughout the war, warning that Kyiv's entry into the EU could bring the war to the bloc.
In September, Orban also said that his country would not support Ukraine’s membership in NATO unless it restores certain laws related to Hungarian minorities in the country.
Echoing Orban's words, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry's state secretary, Menczer, claimed in his video message about Ukraine's EU accession that Ukraine "took away the rights of the Hungarian national community."
Ukraine has been rejecting Hungary's claims that it cracks down on its minorities. One of the main sources of strife has been a 2017 language law that requires at least 70% of education above the fifth grade of school to be conducted in Ukrainian.
Kyiv has been talking to Budapest to resolve the issue of the language of education of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olha Stefanishyna told European Pravda on Nov. 7.
The deputy prime minister believes that Hungary's threats to block Ukraine's EU accession will not hinder "real work" for the benefit of national minorities.
As the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears a two-year mark, Hungary is one of the few European nations advocating against military aid for Ukraine.
Asami Terajima is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent covering Ukrainian military issues, front-line developments, and politics. She is the co-author of the weekly War Notes newsletter. She previously worked as a business reporter for the Kyiv Post focusing on international trade, infrastructure, investment, and energy. Originally from Japan, Terajima moved to Ukraine during childhood and completed her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in the U.S. She is the winner of the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism 2023 (Local Reporter category) and the George Weidenfeld Prize, awarded as part of Germany's Axel Springer Prize 2023. She was also featured in the Media Development Foundation’s “25 under 25: Young and Bold” 2023 list of emerging media makers in Ukraine.
Francis Farrell
