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.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to to Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting from May 14–16, where he is expected to address the war in Ukraine and push for stronger Allied defense commitments.
The Kremlin said the leaders held a detailed discussion about the Russian initiative and Erdogan expressed full support, reiterating Turkey’s readiness to provide a venue and assist in organizing the negotiations.
Wagner mercenary group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks in a video filmed in front of dozens of corpses, allegedly of Wagner fighters killed in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, published on May 5, 2023. (Telegram)
Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin accused "representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry" of placing mines along Wagner troops' exit routes from Bakhmut.
Responding to a question on the Telegram channel for his press service, Prigozhin said that 99% of Wagner troops had withdrawn from Bakhmut since claiming on May 20 that they had captured the city and begun handing over positions to the regular Russian army.
Kyiv has not formally acknowledged the fall of Bakhmut, but both official statements and reports from soldiers on the ground shared with the Kyiv Independent depict a similar scenario.
According to Prigozhin, there were explosive devices placed in around a dozen locations along Wagner troops' exit routes, including "hundreds" of anti-tank mines.
"We conducted investigative actions jointly with law enforcement agencies to document everything. Currently, investigations are underway," Prigozhin said.
Those who placed the explosive devices were "representatives of the Russian defense ministry."
"When asked why they did it, they pointed their fingers upward," Prigozhin added, suggesting that the orders came from higher-ranking officials.
There was "no need" to place the mines to hold back Ukrainian forces in those locations, according to Prigozhin, leading him to believe that they were intended as "public chastisement" for Wagner forces.
Prigozhin's years-long feud with the Russian Defense Ministry became even more public during the Battle of Bakhmut as he blamed them in numerous tirades for not supplying enough ammunition and failing to achieve the primary objectives of Russia's war in Ukraine.
Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.
Francis Farrell
