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.
Erdogan told Macron that international cooperation is critical for initiating peace negotiations and the "sensitive implementation" of Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction processes, the Turkish Presidency reported.
Transmission towers and power lines near a missile-damaged high-voltage electricity substation, operated by a state-owned company Ukrenergo, in central Ukraine, on March 1, 2023. Photo for illustrative purposes only. (Andrew Kravchenko/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The project to synchronize the state grid operator Ukrenergo to its counterparts in continental Europe has been completed, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) reported on Nov. 28.
The project, which began in 2017, originally stipulated a set of conditions that Ukrenergo would need to fulfill in order to establish the "permanent interconnection between the power systems of Continental Europe and Ukraine."
The Nov. 28 announcement was an indication that all the conditions had been fulfilled.
ENTSO-E represents 39 different operators in 35 European countries, and its interconnected electrical grid is the largest in the world.
"This achievement will help to significantly increase the flexibility and reliability of our grid operation and create conditions for expanding cooperation. This is the result of many years of persistent work, which has been particularly challenging since the outbreak of full-scale war," said Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the CEO of Ukrenergo.
Ukrenergo and other Ukrainian energy companies have faced significant stress as a result of Russia's full-scale invasion and subsequent attacks on the energy grid.
Nate Ostiller is a former News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. He works on special projects as a researcher and writer for The Red Line Podcast, covering Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and focused primarily on digital misinformation, memory politics, and ethnic conflict. Nate has a Master’s degree in Russian and Eurasian Studies from the University of Glasgow, and spent two years studying abroad at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine. Originally from the USA, he is currently based in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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