According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), this marks the first time Ukrainian authorities have exposed a Hungarian military intelligence network conducting activities harmful to Ukraine.
Delegations from 35 countries and the Council of Europe gathered in Lviv as EU officials prepare to approve both new defense aid and steps toward establishing a tribunal for Russian leadership.
The ruling marks a significant victory for RFE/RL amid growing concerns about U.S. funding cuts to independent media countering Russian disinformation.
U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the new pope and leader of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, taking the name Pope Leo XIV, a senior cardinal announced on May 8 to crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square, according to Vatican News.
George Simion, leader of Romania's far-right AUR party, who won the first round of the presidential election with nearly 40% of the vote, reiterated that if elected, he would oppose any further assistance to Ukraine and shift Romania’s focus inward.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed their countries' relationship on May 8, vowing to increase cooperation in all areas, including military ties.
"There is Turkey, which maintains channels of communication. And then, above all, there is the People's Republic of China, which, more than anyone else, has the means to make (Russian President Vladimir) Putin come to the negotiating table and soften his demands," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on May 8.
The United States will be ready to "walk away" from the negotiating table if it does not see Russia making progress in negotiation to end the war, U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on May 8.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico arrived in Moscow on May 9 to celebrate Victory Day, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
US President Donald Trump on May 8 called for a "30-day unconditional ceasefire" between Ukraine and Russia. Writing on Truth Social, Trump expressed his hope for "an acceptable ceasefire," with both countries "held accountable for respecting the sanctity of... direct negotiations."
President Volodymyr Zelensky had a "constructive" phone call with United States President Donald Trump on May 8, discussing the war, continued pressure on Russia, and a potential ceasefire.
The survey, conducted between April 24 and May 4, shows that 56.9% of respondents would not be willing to compromise on either territorial integrity or Ukraine’s pro-Western direction in any potential talks with Moscow.
Kyivans bury husband and father gunned down by Russian troops

Seven people gathered on March 14 in a tiny church in the hitherto flourishing downtown neighborhood of Podil.
The normally packed and bustling area stood eerily empty, like a set of a post-apocalyptic film. A frigid silence hunkered down over the district, interrupted occasionally by the faint thunder of the distant artillery, a reminder of why everyone was there.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has claimed another life.
Arkadiy Yasinskiy was no ranking officer or government official. He was a 63-year-old geophysicist and family man, who had gone to pick up some supplies and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time – at the Russian soldiers’ gunpoint.
While the Russian commander waved Yasinskiy’s vehicle through, his men opened fire anyway. The once quiet Kyiv suburb, Stoyanka-2, was where Yasinskiy was killed.
“The year started off so well. If you had told me that I’d be standing at the morgue, requesting a coffin…” said his wife of almost 30 years, Elena Herhel. “I don’t know how I’m going to spend the next 20 years without him.”
Yasinskiy’s funeral
Some of the people that survived Yasinskiy couldn’t attend the funeral. His friend Dmytro, who accompanied Yasinskiy in his last moments, was still trapped in the war zone at the time. Yasinskiy’s son Andriy had been evacuated from the city, at his mother’s request.
“Andriy told me he was going to come to Kyiv for the funeral. I said ‘What? I barely sent you away,’” Herhel said.
She’d already lost her brother to a car accident in November. She couldn’t bear to risk losing her son as well.

On the day of the funeral, Herhel sat next to the open black casket placed in the middle of the tidy church, a heartbroken look on her face, gently stroking the edge of the coffin and whispering her husband’s name.
Some of the fallen man’s colleagues, as well as relatives of Dmytro, gathered around her.
The weary-looking priest, looking like he’s been doing many funerals over the past weeks, picked up his smoking censer and began to sing.
As the sonorous prayers mounted to the censer’s rhythmic swish, the sun came out from behind the clouds and its projector-like rays shot through the smoky interior. The teary faces around the room looked on at the pale, shaved-headed man in the coffin.
One question seemed to hang over the church – why did this man have to die?
Horrors of Stoyanka
Yasinskiy was a Kyiv native and lifelong resident. His geophysicist career took him to the arctic circle and beyond.
“He was a romantic,” Herhel told the Kyiv Independent. “He was always bringing dogs and cats home… for him, there was no such thing as ‘someone else’s pain.’”
When the war started, he wanted to fight, but his age made him unsuitable for Territorial Defense. He decided to volunteer instead.
When his oldest friend and former classmate, Dmytro, asked for some help in the urban village of Stoyanka-2, Yasinskiy did not hesitate to go, according to his wife.

Stoyanka-2, practically its own micro-neighborhood of the neighboring town of Irpin northwest of Kyiv, has seen intense fighting and shelling since the war began.
The triangle of the towns of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel has seen some of the heaviest fighting along the Russian forces’ northwestern axis of attack and much of it spilled into this village.
On that day in early March, Yasinskiy and Dmytro decided to take their vehicle out to drop off some supplies and pick some up near the destroyed bridge to Kyiv, under which refugees have crossed into the relative safety of the capital since the war began. The friends gave a ride to some of the refugees as well.
Soon, the Ukrainian troops advised them to head back quickly, fearing that something was going to happen. While the pair were only at the bridge for a few minutes, they realized that the situation had already changed. On their way back, they saw a burnt-up police car that wasn’t there earlier.
Then, they saw the three armored vehicles, marked with the letter ‘V’ in front of them. Russian soldiers at the temporary checkpoint stepped forward with their guns.
“We raised our hands,” Dmytro told the Kyiv Independent. “The commander or someone waved for us to pass with his right hand. And behind him, they began to shoot.”

He reflexively stepped on the gas but the engine had been hit and quickly stopped working. The van coasted to a stop about 100 meters past the soldiers. Dmytro felt his blood trickling from his side, though he couldn’t remember feeling any pain.
“I said: Arkasha, are you still alive? He said ‘I don’t know yet.’” Those were Yasinskiy’s last words.
Dmytro opened the passenger side door and his friend fell out. When he tried to drag him away, the Russians opened fire again. By a blind stroke of luck, his neighbor happened to be driving in the opposite direction at that moment and decided to pick him up. A surgeon who was visiting a neighbor patched him up.
For all of Dmytro’s reluctance to leave his property in Stoyanka-2, he eventually was forced to evacuate to Kyiv days after his friend's funeral, when the shelling intensified to an unbearable degree.
Yasinskiy’s body remained on the ground for four days before Dmytro’s nephew could pick it up.
After the service wrapped up, with the priest asking for God to forgive Yasinskiy’s sins and bless the defenders of the Ukrainian homeland, a small Ukrainian flag was draped over the dead man’s body. Herhel kissed him goodbye.
He was laid to rest at Lisove Cemetery, near Kyiv's Troieshchyna neighborhood.

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