"We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X. "Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and searched for."
The publications' latest report covers the period of February 24, 2022 to May 8, 2025. Since it was last updated at the end of April, 2,857 additional Russian military personnel have been confirmed killed.
Hungary cancelled a meeting planned for May 12 with a Ukrainian delegation on the rights of national minorities, Hungary's Deputy Foreign Minister said on May 11, amid a deepening spying scandal between the two countries.
Three were injured in Russia's Kursk Oblast when the town of Rylsk was allegedly struck by a missile attack on May 11, local governor Alexander Khinshtein claimed.
This week, the world watched in anticipation for Russia’s Victory Day parade after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented that he could not guarantee the safety of those attending. Meanwhile, the European Union moves one step forward to banning Russian gas from the European continent. It is also revealed this week that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fallen out of step with the White House.
"(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin... doesn't want to have a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the bloodbath. Ukraine should agree to this, immediately," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to to Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting from May 14–16, where he is expected to address the war in Ukraine and push for stronger Allied defense commitments.
The Kremlin said the leaders held a detailed discussion about the Russian initiative and Erdogan expressed full support, reiterating Turkey’s readiness to provide a venue and assist in organizing the negotiations.
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.
Archive photo: Main city square with destroyed city council building in Kupiansk, Kharkiv Oblast, on Oct. 8, 2023. (Amadeusz Świerk)
Russian forces continued attacking along the Kupiansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on Dec. 18 as a part of their effort to capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast, the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest assessment.
According to experts, the Russian military is unlikely to have made any significant advances. The ISW points to a Ukrainian General Staff report indicating that Ukrainian forces successfully repelled Russian assaults in various locations, including northeast and east of Kupiansk near Synkivka (nine kilometers northeast of Kupiansk), east of Petropavlivka (seven kilometers east of Kupiansk), northwest of Kreminna near Makiivka (23 kilometers northwest of Kreminna), west of Kreminna in the area east of Terny (17 kilometers east of Kreminna), and south of Kreminna near Spirne (30 kilometers south of Kreminna).
Russia is ramping up efforts to capture Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast, moving reserves of assault battalions to the area to compensate for heavy losses, according to Volodymyr Fito, who heads the Army's public relations service.
Freed from Russian occupation during the Ukrainian counteroffensive in September 2022, Kupiansk has become a focal point for renewed Russian offensives due to its strategic significance as a key logistics hub. This makes it a potential launching point for further advances south or west.
In Luhansk Oblast, Russian forces concentrated the majority of their attacks on Makiivka, local military administration head Artem Lysohor said on Dec. 17. Heavy battles also took place near Terny, a village located some 120 kilometres east-northeast of Donetsk city.
Russian military bloggers claimed that Russian forces are trying to break through Ukrainian defenses near Synkivka and the Serebrianske forest area south of Kreminna, but Ukrainian forces are counterattacking in these areas, according to the ISW.
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Asami Terajima
