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.
Illustrative photo: The dead bodies of two Russian soldiers lie on the grass in front of a house in the liberated village of Makiivka in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk Oblast. A cardboard box with the letter "Z," a symbol of the Russian army, is placed in front of one of the bodies. (Laurel Chor/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Through open-source research, Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, together with BBC Russia, confirmed the names of 52,789 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 in late April, the names of 1,100 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 3,400 officers, with 403 holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher have been killed in combat in Ukraine.
In early May, Ukrainian sources reported a strike using long-range ATACMS missiles on a concentration of Russian military personnel in the occupied Luhansk Oblast, claiming that the attack could have killed up to 100 soldiers.
Russian sources, including pro-war bloggers, were silent on this strike. In the past, similar attacks have ignited heated discussions within this community, with bloggers cautiously criticizing unnamed commanders for making their subordinates gather in open fields, according to Mediazona.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out similar strikes in February 2024, when three consecutive formations were hit by HIMARS missiles.
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, although total estimates of Russia's casualties since the full-scale invasion vary widely.
President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in February 2024 that 180,000 Russians had been killed in the war. He added that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have also been killed. Zelensky said that the exact number is unknown, and it would only be possible to find out once the territories occupied by Russia were liberated.
As of May 17, 2024, the Ukrainian military estimates Russian combat losses at 489,870 troops killed.
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.
Chris York
