Brazilian President Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had appealed to his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, to ask Putin if he was willing to conclude a peace agreement.
Earlier reporting from the Washington Post cited a former Russian official who claimed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, would represent Moscow in the talks.
The Council of Europe on May 14 approved the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russia's top leadership for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, Ukrainian lawmaker Maria Mezentseva reported.
Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Moscow admitted she was in Russian detention the following year.
Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel speaks about the future of the EU-led special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine and its role in bringing Russia to justice.
Turkish officials told Bloomberg that while they don't expect Trump to visit Istanbul, they are not ruling it out, and preparations for any scenario are underway.
Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023 in connection with the activities of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which was co-founded by Golos's legal predecessor, the Golos association.
Ukraine's underground storage facilities are currently using 19.4% of their capacity. Almost 32%, or 2.79 bcm, less gas is available in the storages than in the previous year, according to the estimates.
The majority of Ukrainians, 71%, do not support holding elections before a full peace deal, even in the case of a ceasefire and security guarantees, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on May 14.
"He'd like me to be there, and that's a possibility. ... I don't know that he would be there if I'm not there. We're going to find out," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Qatar, Reuters reported.
Trump has long demanded that NATO allies increase their military spending, previously calling for the alliance to raise its benchmark from 2% to 5% of GDP.
The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. (Wikimedia Commons)
Russia's Defense Ministry claimed on Aug. 17 that Ukraine is allegedly planning to attack the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia, which was dismissed by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry a day before.
The Russian ministry's statement came after several Russian state-controlled media claimed that Ukrainian forces were allegedly planning to attack the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, as well as the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Heorhii Tykhyi, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry's spokesperson, called these claims "a surge of insane Russian propaganda."
Russia's Defense Ministry threatens to "immediately take tough retaliatory military and military-technical measures" in case of the alleged attack on the Kursk power plant, claiming that Kyiv allegedly wants to blame Russia afterward.
"We officially refute these false reports. Ukraine has neither the intention nor the ability to carry out any such actions. Russia must stop spreading dangerous lies," the Ukrainian spokesperson said on Aug. 16.
Russia had previously claimed that Ukraine was developing a "dirty bomb," a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste, in 2022. After the inspection at Ukraine's request, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts found no "indications of undeclared nuclear activities and materials at the locations," the agency's chief, Rafael Grossi, said.
"Nothing has changed since then," Tykhyi said.
"Ukraine has always been and remains a committed member of the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons). We do not have any 'dirty bombs' and do not plan to acquire them."
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the counter-disinformation department at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said that Russia "may be preparing a nuclear provocation."
"Their scenario of accusing us of terrorism and the attack on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant did not work. Now they are lying," he wrote on Telegram on Aug. 16.
The Kursk power plant is located nearly 80 kilometers from the Kursk Oblast border town of Sudzha, which was captured by Ukrainian forces this week during Kyiv's ongoing incursion into Kursk Oblast. Russian media reported that Russia is preparing to defend the Kursk plant as Ukrainian troops approach and have begun constructing defensive lines near it.
The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear power plant, has been under Russian occupation since March 2022. Its position near the front line has led to heightened nuclear safety risksthroughout Russia's full-scale war.
Kyiv accusedRussian forces on Aug. 11 of setting fire to "a large number of automobile tires in cooling towers" at the nuclear plant in an effort to "create panic in the settlements on the right bank of the former reservoir."
The IAEA said that nuclear safety at the power plant had not been affected.
Kateryna Denisova works as a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a news editor at the NV media outlet for four years, covering mainly Ukrainian and international politics. Kateryna holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. She also was a fellow at journalism schools in the Czech Republic and Germany.
Martin Fornusek
