"According to the participants of the performances, their goal is to remind the civilized world of the barbaric actions of Moscow, which for many years and decades has systematically violated international law," a source in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) told the Kyiv Independent.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin delivers his address in Moscow on March 23, 2024. (Mikhail Metzel/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Editor's note: The article was updated with additional context on Russian attacks against Ukraine's energy grid in late 2022 and early 2023.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claimed that the large-scale strikes against Ukraine's energy infrastructure are "a response" to the attacks on Russian energy facilities, Russian state-controlled news agency Interfax reported on April 11.
Moscow has recently intensified its missile and drone strikes against Ukraine's critical infrastructure, destroying several thermal power plants across the country, including the Trypillia plant, the main electricity supplier to Kyiv, Zhytomyr, and Cherkasy oblasts.
Back in early October 2022, Russia launched a months-long series of missile and drone attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leading to blackouts amid freezing temperatures and reportedly damaging half of the country’s energy system.
They were not preceded by any Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.
Putin called the Russian strikes part of the so-called "demilitarization" process as they affect Ukraine's defense industrial complex, he claimed.
"Unfortunately, we have seen a series of strikes on our power facilities recently and have had to respond," Putin said during a meeting with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko in Moscow.
The Financial Times reported in March that the U.S. warned Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, allegedly out of concern that strikes could raise global oil prices. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on April 2 that Washington has "neither supported nor enabled strikes by Ukraine outside its territory."
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that targeting Russian oil and weapons facilities is a legitimate military strategyand that Ukraine has a right to use its own weapons for self-defense.
Abbey Fenbert
