The sanctions appear to be in response to Russia's rejection of a 30-day ceasefire that the U.K., alongside Ukraine, France, Germany, and Poland, demanded during a visit to Kyiv on May 10.
"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.
Destroyed Russian tanks are lying in a field near the village of Bohorodychne in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Feb. 13, 2024. (Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Russian officials and state-controlled media largely refrained from publicly discussing the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 to avoid highlighting Russia's failure to achieve its stated military objectives, the Institute for the Study of War announced in their daily assessment on Feb. 25.
Russian opposition media reported on Feb. 25 that state-controlled media channels did not mention the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion. Popular pundits on these channels mentioned the anniversary but did not provide further commentary on the subject. ISW also found minimal discussion of the date from political leadership.
ISW assessed that Russian officials and state-affiliated media were reluctant to discuss the anniversary to avoid highlighting Russia's failure to achieve its stated goals in Ukraine at a significant human cost.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced at a forum commemorating two years of full-scale war that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since Feb. 24, 2022.
Independent Russian media outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported in a joint study on Feb. 24 that 83,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in Russia's war.
The U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Feb. 24 that according to its estimations, approximately 350,000 Russian personnel have been killed or wounded.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv releases public information about troop losses, but the Russian military's culture of dishonest reporting means that Russian officials themselves likely have a "low level of understanding" about casualty figures, the ministry said in December 2023.
Rachel Amran is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked on the Europe and Central Asia team of Human Rights Watch investigating war crimes in Ukraine. Rachel holds a master's degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Regional Studies from Columbia University.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
