The move follows Ukraine's ratification of the minerals agreement, deepening U.S.-Ukraine economic ties and signaling expanded U.S. involvement in Ukraine's long-term recovery.
"Ukraine has initiated a coordinated campaign to vilify Hungary in order to undermine our initiative to hold a poll on (Kyiv's) EU membership," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned that further concessions from Ukraine during negotiations would be unreasonable if Russia continues to attack civilian targets.
U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, will travel to Istanbul for possible peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, Reuters reported on May 13, citing three undisclosed sources.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, but said both leaders are ready to fly to Istanbul if Russian President Vladimir Putin chooses to attend the talks there.
A captive named Umit allegedly agreed to serve in the Russian army in exchange for Russian citizenship and a monetary reward of 2 million rubles ($25,000).
Russia's Buryatia Republic declared a state of emergency on May 13 over massive forest fires that have engulfed multiple regions in the Russian Far East.
Illustrative purposes only: A truck carries timber across a bridge over the A2 highway linking Berlin and Warsaw near Torzym, Poland, on Dec. 13, 2013. (Bartek Sadowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Belarusian timber enters the EU market despite sanctions, being supplied to Poland under false documentation while passed off as Kazakh wood, according to an investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Schemes project, the Polish outlet Gazeta Wyborcza, and the Belarusian Investigative Center.
The EU imposed wide-reaching sanctions against Russia and its ally Belarus in March 2022 in reaction to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The restrictions extended to Belarusian timber, which has been traditionally imported into the EU in an amount worth over $1 billion every year.
After the imposition of the sanctions, wood imports from Kazakhstan to Poland increased from $15 million to almost $74 million between 2022 and 2023, even though Kazakhstan has very little forested land and supplied meager volumes to the EU before the full-scale war.
The journalists analyzed a contract and accompanying documents for the purchase of about 1 million euros ($1.1 million) worth of timber between the Polish company PLRBL and the Kazakh company Nurr-electro.
A representative of Nurr-electro told the journalists that the Kazakh company had never concluded such a contract, and graphic design experts said that the seals and signatures on the documents had been falsified.
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Ukraine Business Roundup
An employee of Gallardo, a Belarusian company transporting the wood, told the journalists that the carriers never went to Kazakhstan and loaded the supplies in Belarus. According to the investigation, the scheme was implemented in collaboration with the Belarusian company SO RBL, whose owner, Belarusian Oleh Yanovych, is also the chairman of the board of the Polish PLRBL.
The journalists presented the results of the investigation to Polish authorities, but the country's customs officials said they do not have capacities to verify all customs declarations. Poland's Interior Ministry said it had opened an investigation based on the provided evidence but gave no further details.
Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He was also volunteering as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukraïner. Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.
Maria Yeryoma
