The comments came after Trump urged Ukraine to agree to direct negotiations with Russia, which has invited Kyiv to peace talks in Istanbul on May 15, without first agreeing to halt military operations.
A Russian drone hit a civilian freight train in Donetsk Oblast on May 12 and injured its driver, Ukrainian Railways said amid Kyiv's calls for a ceasefire.
Moscow and Hanoi agreed to negotiate and sign agreements to construct nuclear power plants in Vietnam, the two countries said in a joint statement on May 11.
The sanctions appear to be in response to Russia's rejection of a 30-day ceasefire that the U.K., alongside Ukraine, France, Germany, and Poland, demanded during a visit to Kyiv on May 10.
"We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X. "Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and searched for."
The publications' latest report covers the period of February 24, 2022 to May 8, 2025. Since it was last updated at the end of April, 2,857 additional Russian military personnel have been confirmed killed.
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.
The destroyed marketplaces are seen after Russian missiles hit residential area in Kharkiv City, May 8, 2022. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
On 8 May the international community commemorates Victory in Europe Day or V-E Day, marking the official signing in Berlin of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies, and remembers all those who have fallen in defending liberty and democracy during World War II, including millions of Ukrainians.
Russia commemorates this day on 9 May when Soviet authorities announced victory over Nazi Germany. Under Putin, this has become an annual military parade to showcase Russia’s military hardware.
In fact, 9 May was smeared from its inception in 1945 as Soviet authorities never stopped brutally oppressing with impunity the people in the Soviet Union and its so-called satellite states.
Since the beginning of its full-blown military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Russia has smeared a deep layer of blood by committing genocide against the Ukrainian people. This fact has been recognized by the President of the United States Joe Biden on 12 April 2022 and by a unanimous Motion of the House of Commons of Canada on 27 April 2022.
In fact, Sovietism, Nazism and today’s Rashism have one horrific thing in common – they are each fully responsible for the perpetration of the worst crime against humanity – genocide – namely the Holodomor, the Holocaust, and today’s ongoing genocide in Ukraine.
As a result, Putin has joined the despicable company of the world’s most destructive imperialist and authoritarian rulers, namely Stalin and Hitler.
On the UN web site one can read that:
"The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1948 and signified the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’ after the atrocities committed during the Second World War.”
Despite this laudable “never again” commitment, a genocide against the Ukrainian people is being committed, once again, in 2022 – 90 years after the Holodomor – and the international community must help stop it now.
This year, on 9 May, Russia was planning to announce that its “special military operation” in Ukraine was successful, and that Russia took full control of the whole of Ukraine and replaced its governing authorities with a pro-Kremlin puppet government.
When this initial plan failed miserably due to Ukraine’s formidable and heroic resistance, Russia changed its imperialist plans and was set to announce instead that it had “liberated” the whole of the Donbas region.
This will not happen either and – ironically – Russia is likely to “declare war” against Ukraine on Victory Day 2022 which will, in Russia’s warped logic, give it license to spill even more Ukrainian blood onto Russia’s national canvas of carnage.
Eugene Czolij is president of the Ukraine-2050 nongovernmental organization and served as president of the Ukrainian World Congress from 2008-2018. Ukraine-2050 was established to help implement within one generation – by 2050 – strategies for the sustainable development of Ukraine as a fully independent, territorially integral, democratic, reformed and economically competitive European state.
