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.
The patches with a white-blue-white flag and the logo of the Free Russia Legion are seen during a briefing in northern Ukraine, not far from the Russian border, on May 24, 2023. (Photo by NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Fighting between anti-Kremlin militias and the Russian army is taking place in five settlements near the Ukrainian border, Oleksii Baranovskyi, a fighter with the Freedom of Russia Legion, said on air on March 13.
The Freedom of Russia Legion and another militia, the Siberian Battalion, crossed the border into Russia from Ukraine on March 12 to conduct combat operations in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts.
Both the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion posted videos on their social media platforms purporting to show their respective groups operating in Russia.
The Freedom of Russia Legion then claimed to have taken under control the village of Tyotkino in Kursk Oblast.
The legion launched an incursion into Belgorod Oblast in May 2023. Baranovskyi said that the Russian army was well prepared for the new incursion in the region, as "additional fortifications appeared there and they dug various trenches."
The Kyiv Independent could not verify Baranovskyi's claims.
Baranovskyi also discussed the upcoming presidential election in Russia on March 16 and 17, which is set to cement Russian President Vladimir Putin's grip on power.
The attacks were "timed with the so-called elections," Baranovskyi said, and referred to the fighting as a "voting method."
"We, as caring citizens of Russia, have thus decided our political will, our attitude towards these elections, and the regime of Vladimir Putin."
"I have no doubt that the main purpose is to, if not disrupt the presidential elections in Russia, then at least somehow interfere with the normal process of expressing the will of citizens," Putin said in an interview with Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti and Russia-1 TV channel on March 12.
Elsa Court is the audience development manager at the Kyiv Independence. She previously worked as a news editor at the Kyiv Independent and was previously an intern at the Kyiv Post. She has a Master’s in Conflict Studies and Human Rights from Utrecht University. Elsa is originally from the UK.
Emmanuelle Chaze
