"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.
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Saturday, May 10
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.
The United States embassy in Kyiv on May 9 issued a warning that Russia could launch "a potentially significant" attack in the coming days, despite Putin's self-declared Victory Day "truce."
The sanctioned oil tankers have transported over $24 billion in cargo since 2024, according to Downing Street. The U.K. has now sanctioned more shadow fleet vessels than any other country.
(Updated: )Victory Day
The sanctions list includes 58 individuals and 74 companies, with 67 Russian enterprises related to military technology.
Washington and its partners are considering additional sanctions if the parties do not observe a ceasefire, with political and technical negotiations between Europe and the U.S. intensifying since last week, Reuters' source said.
Despite the Kremlin's announcement of a May 8–11 truce, heavy fighting continued in multiple regions throughout the front line.
Putin has done in Russia everything that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had been against in Brazil.
The Kyiv Independent’s contributor Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke spent a day with a mobile team from the State Emergency Service in Nikopol in the south of Ukraine as they responded to relentless drone, artillery, and mortar strikes from Russian forces just across the Dnipro River. Nikopol is located across from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.
There are currently 180 political prisoners, including 116 Crimean Tatars, illegally held in Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets reported on Feb. 26, which marks the ninth anniversary of the start of the Russian occupation of the peninsula.
“Due to the constant fear of Ukrainian resistance, Russia does not stop the harsh repression and persecution of our citizens in the temporarily occupied Crimea: Illegal searches, fabricated criminal cases, fabricated sentences, including those against representatives of the indigenous people of the peninsula — the Crimean Tatars,” Lubinets wrote on Telegram.
Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 following Ukraine's EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich. The peninsula is currently home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
According to the ombudsman, among the recent cases of Russia’s “flagrant violations” of fundamental human rights and norms of international law in Crimea is the death of two tortured political prisoners — Kostiantyn Shyrinh and Dzhemil Hafarov.
Sentenced to 13 years in prison, 60-year-old Crimean Tatar Hafarov died in a Russian pre-trial detention center on Feb. 10, Ukrinform reported.
Shyrinh, 61, was sentenced to 12 years on the charge of “espionage.” According to the media, he died in a penal colony in the remote Russian town of Novotroitsk earlier in February.
“They were not provided with the necessary medical care,” Lubinets said. “But even such a high price for the right to live in a free, independent, and sovereign country will not stop the Ukrainian people."
Earlier in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the nine-year anniversary of the start of the Russian occupation in Crimea, stating that "by returning Crimea, we will restore peace."
"This is our land. Our people. Our history. We will return the Ukrainian flag to every corner of Ukraine," he said.
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