"Ukraine and all allies are ready for a complete unconditional ceasefire on land, in the air, and at sea for at least 30 days, starting as early as Monday," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote.
U.S. President Donald Trump has acknowledged in private that Russia is difficult to negotiate with because they "want the whole thing," referring to Ukraine, the WSJ reported, citing sources familiar with the comments.
A notice about the airspace closure was published on the U.S. Defense Department's NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) website on May 10, as cited by Ukrainian defense news outlet Militarnyi.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the idea of a 30-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, claiming in an interview with ABC News on May 10 that it would be "an advantage" for Ukraine.
"Our involvement in the war was justifiable, and this belongs to our sovereign rights," North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said. "I regard this as part of the sacred mission we must execute for our brothers and comrades-in-arms."
"We have a plan B and a plan C. But our focus is plan A, the essence of which is to get everyone's support" for Ukraine's accession, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
"(T)he presence at the Victory Parade of a country that bombs cities, hospitals, and daycares, and which has caused the deaths and injuries of over a million people over three years, is a shame," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"According to the participants of the performances, their goal is to remind the civilized world of the barbaric actions of Moscow, which for many years and decades has systematically violated international law," a source in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) told the Kyiv Independent.
"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.
A Falcon 9 spacecraft built by SpaceX takes off at a launchpad in the United States (SpaceX)
SpaceX, the world's leading private space exploration company headed by Elon Musk, has successfully launched the Sich 2-30, the first Ukrainian satellite in orbit in a decade.
Transporter-3 rideshare mission on Jan. 13 saw a Falcon 9 space vehicle take off at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying a total of 105 various spacecraft -- mostly microsatellites and orbital transfer vehicles, according to SpaceX.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/mFBeuSAvhUQ
Sich 2-30 is an Earth observation satellite built in 2019 by the Yuzhmash, the Dnipro-based factory, one of the world's leading spacecraft components production centers plunged into a decades-long, severe crisis following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Falcon 9, the world's first reusable, two-stage rocket, brought the Ukrainian satellite to its heliosynchronous orbit around the Earth nearly an hour and a half after the launch.
According to Ukraine's State Space Agency, this 180-kilogram satellite is designed to be orbiting at altitudes between 663 and 682 kilometers and take pictures of the Earth in visible and infrared bands. It also carries a 10-gigabyte hard drive and is capable of transmitting data to its mission control center in Ukraine at the rate of 30.72 megabits per second.
The satellite is going to collect data for science and the military in the next five years, according to the agency.
"(The Sich will be operated) to monitor the use of agricultural lands, vegetation, woods, water resources, emergency management," said Volodymyr Taftai, the space agency's head, on Jan. 13.
"In other words, it's a civilian satellite. At the same time, it will give an opportunity to get pretty qualitative data on the construction of engineering structures, the movement of military forces, warships, and so on."
The launch is the brightest moment for Ukraine's decaying space industry in over a decade. The country hasn't been present in the Earth orbit since December 2012 when it lost contact with its only satellite Sich-2. Launched in 2011 from a Russian spaceport, Sich stayed active for just a year.
Following the problematic construction of the new device in Dnipro and numerous tests, the Ukrainian in early 2021 finally announced a deal with SpaceX to set the Ukrainian satellite into orbit at nearly $1 million.
Approximately at 8:15 p.m. Kyiv time, the Sich flew over the Ukrainian territory and made contact with its mission control center.
Illia Ponomarenko was a defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent in 2021-2023. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.
