"I have great hope that an agreement for a ceasefire in Ukraine will be reached this weekend," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on May 9, shortly before traveling to Kyiv alongside the leaders of France, Poland, and the U.K.
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.
Illustrative image: Workers exhume a body at a mass burial site containing around 440 graves in liberated Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, on Sept. 16, 2022. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin/The Kyiv Independent)
Through open-source research, Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, together with BBC Russia, confirmed the names of 56,858 Russian soldiers who had been killed since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since Mediazona's last update at the end of May, the names of 2,677 Russian soldiers have been added to the list of casualties.
The journalists note that the actual figures are likely significantly higher, as their verified information comes from public sources such as obituaries, posts by relatives, regional media reports, and statements from local authorities.
Since Russia began its all-out war against Ukraine, over 3,600 officers, with 424 holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher have been killed in combat in Ukraine.
To date, Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, Russia's deputy commander of the Southern Military District, is the highest-ranking Russian military official to have been killed during the war.
The analysts note that at least 11,463 Russian inmates have been killed on Ukraine's eastern front.
On May 25, the total number of Russian losses surpassed 500,000 military personnel according to Ukrainian estimates. The numbers are seemingly in line with the estimates of the U.K. and France, which said earlier in May that the overall Russian losses are set to be around 500,000, including 150,000 deaths.
As of June 21, 2024, the Ukrainian military estimates Russian combat losses at 531,980 troops.
On Feb. 24, in a joint study with independent Russian media outlet Meduza, Mediazona reported that at least 83,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in Russia's war. President Volodymyr Zelensky also claimed in February that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have also been killed.
Both estimates have likely grown significantly higher as Russia launched its spring offensive in Kharkiv Oblast.
Dmytro Basmat is a senior news editor for The Kyiv Independent. He previously worked in Canadian politics as a communications lead and spokesperson for a national political party, and as a communications assistant for a Canadian Member of Parliament. Basmat has a Master's degree in Political Management from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Governance from Toronto Metropolitan University.
Martin Fornusek
