"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.
A screenshot from a video shared on social media on March 6, 2023, of a man identified as Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Matsievsky, allegedly shot dead by his captors.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported on March 12 that the results of an investigation showed that the serviceman who was seen in a widely-shared video, executed by his captors after saying the patriotic salute “Glory to Ukraine!”, was Oleksandr Matsievskyi.
42-year-old Matsievskyi was a sniper of the 163rd battalion of the 119th separate brigade of the territorial defense of Chernihiv Oblast.
According to the SBU, Matsievsky is understood to have been executed on Dec. 30 last year, shortly after his capture near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast.
In the evening of March 12, Matsievskyi was awarded posthumously by President Zelensky as a Hero of Ukraine, the highest individual honor in the country.
On March 6, popular Ukrainian bloggers shared a video in which an unarmed man in a military uniform with a Ukrainian flag was shot by multiple rifle bursts after saying the Ukrainian national salute.
Final confirmation took days as there was initial confusion about the man's identity.
On March 7, Ukraine's 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade tentatively identified the soldier as its serviceman who went missing near Bakhmut on Feb. 3. Shortly after their statement, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces presented the same version in their own post, but added that final confirmation would come after an investigation.
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