Flight MH17 departed from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport en-route to Kuala Lumpur International Airport on July 17, 2014. Three hours into the flight, the Boeing-777 was shot down by Russian proxy forces using a Buk surface-to-air missile above Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
"I am grateful for the support and the readiness at the highest level to promote diplomacy," President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the phone conservation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We share the same view on the need for a ceasefire."
The convictions mark a significant development in Britain's efforts to counter Russian intelligence operations amid heightened tensions stemming from Moscow's war against Ukraine and repeated Kremlin threats toward Kyiv's allies.
According to the Verkhovna Rada's website, Ukraine completed the ratification of the U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement on May 12. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the deal.
"I myself have heard relatives talking: our village is being attacked, let's roll the car out of the garage, maybe they will shell it — at least we will get money. The car is old, we can't sell it," Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
The new tranche brings total recent EU defense support for Ukraine to 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion), marking a significant expansion of European efforts to boost Kyiv's defense industry.
"Russia is ready for negotiations without any preconditions," Putin claimed in an address marking the end of the three-day Victory Day ceasefire. He invited Ukraine to begin talks in Istanbul on May 15.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu attend in blessing of a founding stone of new main Russian Army cathedral in the Patriot Expo Park in Kubinka, 50 km. southwest of Moscow, on Sept. 19, 2018. (Mikhail Svetlov via Getty Images)
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on Jan. 23, approving a proposal by the National Security and Defense Council to sanction 21 leaders and priests of the Russian Orthodox Church. Among the sanctioned is Mikhail Gundyaev, a nephew of the church's head Patriarch Kirill, who has openly supported Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.
The list includes 16 top clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church, proposed by Ukraine's Security Service, and six more church members offered by the Cabinet of Ministers.
Some of them are responsible for the Russian Orthodox Church's cooperation with the country's military and law enforcement, public communications. Others are known for publicly justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine and spreading pro-war propaganda.
Sergei Ryakhovsky, the head of the Spiritual Council of the Russian United Union of Evangelical Christians (Pentecostals), was also sanctioned.
"Sanctions have been introduced against 22 people — Russian citizens who support terror and genocidal politics under the guise of spirituality," Zelensky said in his video address on Jan. 23.
In June, Patriarch Kirill said that Russian troops fighting against Ukraine were "protecting Russia…guided by an inner moral feeling based on the Orthodox faith." Earlier, he denied Moscow's aggression against Ukraine, saying that Russia "has never attacked anyone."
During Russia's full-scale invasion, the Russian Orthodox Church has also illegally annexed two dioceses of its autonomous Ukrainian branch - the Crimean diocese and the Rovenki diocese in Luhansk Oblast - in parallel with Russia's illegal annexation of Ukrainian regions. Previously they were subordinated to the Moscow-affiliated metropolitan of Kyiv, but now they are controlled directly by Patriarch Kirill.
In December, Ukraine also sanctioned leaders and clergy members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church- Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), an affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was subject to multiple SBU raids earlier.
During these raids, the SBU found Russian propaganda and xenophobic literature, Russian passports belonging to senior clergy, and documents with pro-Russian ideological messages at the premises of the UOC-MP.
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