Flight MH17 departed from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport en-route to Kuala Lumpur International Airport on July 17, 2014. Three hours into the flight, the Boeing-777 was shot down by Russian proxy forces using a Buk surface-to-air missile above Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
"I am grateful for the support and the readiness at the highest level to promote diplomacy," President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the phone conservation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We share the same view on the need for a ceasefire."
The convictions mark a significant development in Britain's efforts to counter Russian intelligence operations amid heightened tensions stemming from Moscow's war against Ukraine and repeated Kremlin threats toward Kyiv's allies.
According to the Verkhovna Rada's website, Ukraine completed the ratification of the U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement on May 12. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the deal.
"I myself have heard relatives talking: our village is being attacked, let's roll the car out of the garage, maybe they will shell it — at least we will get money. The car is old, we can't sell it," Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
The new tranche brings total recent EU defense support for Ukraine to 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion), marking a significant expansion of European efforts to boost Kyiv's defense industry.
"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.
A neon piece depicting Crimea, part of a broader work by Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan, during the exhibition "The Artist as Prophet" at the Weisser Elefant gallery on July 29, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
Russian-installed courts in occupied Crimea have issued 472 rulings on "discrediting" the Russian military since the start of the full-scale invasion, Krym.Realii, a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reported on Nov. 3.
Russia passed sweeping censorship laws in March 2022 that essentially criminalized any criticism of the invasion or contradiction of Russian propaganda.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin then signed amendments to the Russian Criminal Code in March 2023 that introduced harsher punishments for "discrediting participants" of Moscow's all-out war against Ukraine.
The amendments also made it illegal not only to "discredit" official soldiers, but also volunteer fighters and irregular armed groups fighting in Ukraine, such as the Wagner Group.
Punishments include a fine of up to 5 million rubles (about $66,450) and a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
Two men in occupied Crimea were fined 40,000 rubles each ($400) in October for "publicly discrediting the Russian army" after they were caught listening to a Ukrainian song in public.
The two men were fined for playing the song "Good evening, we are from Ukraine."
Yevhen Yaroshenko, an analyst from the NGO KrymSOS, told Krym.Realii that Russian-controlled courts issued 27 rulings on "discrediting" the Russian military in October 2023 alone.
Five verdicts involved cases of "repeatedly discrediting" the Russian military, according to Yaroshenko.
Daria Shulzhenko
