Zelensky on May 12 removed Lieutenant General Ivan Havryliuk from the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the top command and control body for all branches of Ukraine's defense apparatus.
Ukraine remains the most mined country in the world. Nearly one-third of Ukraine's territory, approximately 174,000 square kilometers, had been mined since Russia began its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
The phone call comes as Moscow once again rejected a 30-day ceasefire, with Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova claiming that a ceasefire would give "Kyiv a break to restore its military potential and continue its confrontation with Russia."
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.
UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, on Oct. 11, 2017. (Chesnot/Getty Images)
Russia was not elected to the UNESCO Executive Board during a Nov. 15 vote "for the first time in history," President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
"The era of Russian influence is over, and rightly so: Russian terrorists have no place at the head of significant international bodies," the president wrote on the social media platform X.
According to the voting results published on UNESCO's website, Serbia, Albania, Slovakia, and Czechia were elected for the Group II "Eastern Europe" of the Board. Prior to the most recent vote, Russia was among the countries represented in this group.
"Not a bad couple of weeks. First, Moscow was kicked out (of the) UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the elections in New York for the first time since its foundation; now, Moscow is thrown out of the UNESCO Executive Board, yet again for the first time in its history," said Ukraine's Permanent Representative in the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya.
Russia was ousted from a number of international bodies following its aggression against Ukraine, including the Council of Europe and the UN Human Rights Council. On Nov. 9, Russia's representative failed to be elected for the ICJ, losing to the Romanian representative.
Zelensky called on UNESCO last year to expel Russia in response to its attacks on Ukrainian cultural heritage.
The appeal was reiterated by the Ukrainian parliament this July in the wake of Russian attacks on Odesa's historic city center, a designated world heritage site. As of Nov. 2, 327 cultural sites have been damaged by Russian attacks on Ukraine, UNESCO said.
Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He was also volunteering as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukraïner. Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.
Anna Husarska
