Ukraine is considering moving away from the U.S. dollar and closer to the euro as a benchmark for the hryvnia, National Bank Governor Andrii Pyshnyi told Reuters.
The Atesh partisan group claims it disabled communication at several Russian military facilities when it allegedly destroyed equipment at a transformer substation in the village of Mogiltsy in Russia's Moscow Oblast.
"The Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions in order to end the conflict. We think they’re asking for too much," U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on May 7, according to Politico.
EU ambassadors began talks this week on a 17th sanctions package that targets Russia’s military-industrial complex, Moscow’s shadow shipping fleet, and related support networks.
Ukrainian artillery batteries fire on the Bahkmut frontline in Donetsk Oblast on May 28, 2023. (Photo by Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar reported on June 7 that Ukrainian forces have gone on the offensive near Bakhmut, making advances ranging from 200 to 1,100 meters.
Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi also said that Ukrainian forces were advancing on Russian flanks near Bakhmut and Russian forces were losing ground.
The regular Russian army has been in the process of replacing Russia's Wagner mercenary group near Bakhmut.
Maliar previously reported on June 3 that some mercenaries were still located near Bakhmut, despite Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin declaring that troop withdrawal would be completed by June 1.
According to Maliar, the remaining Wagner mercenaries were training regular troops. Prigozhin announced that Wagner troops would withdraw after claiming that Bakhmut had been captured on May 20.
Kyiv did not formally acknowledge the claim.
While fighting near Bakhmut is still ongoing, the once-prosperous industrial city in Donetsk Oblast which was home to over 70,000 people has been destroyed.
Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.
Francis Farrell
