"He'd like me to be there, and that's a possibility. ... I don't know that he would be there if I'm not there. We're going to find out," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Qatar, Reuters reported.
Trump has long demanded that NATO allies increase their military spending, previously calling for the alliance to raise its benchmark from 2% to 5% of GDP.
More than 1,000 Russian government entities and 1,200 private companies are involved in the economy of occupied Mariupol, a major southeastern city occupied by Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to a research paper published on May 14.
The measures target almost 200 ships of Russia's "shadow fleet," 30 companies involved in sanctions evasion, 75 sanctions on entities and individuals linked to the Russian military-industrial complex, and more.
The government has approved "reform roadmaps in the rule of law, public administration, and democratic institutions, as well as Ukraine’s negotiation position," Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
The statement did not name the ex-official by name, but details of the case indicate it relates to Oleh Hladkovsky, a former deputy secretary of Ukraine's top security body who has been wanted since mid-April.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had appealed to his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, to ask Putin if he was willing to conclude a peace agreement.
"Trump needs to believe that Putin actually lies," Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv. "And we should do our part. Sensibly approach this issue, to show that it’s not us that is slowing down the process."
The EU plans to significantly increase tariffs on Ukrainian goods after the current duty-free deal lapses on June 6, the Financial Times reported on May 14, citing undisclosed diplomatic sources.
The blockade ended at 10:30 p.m. local time. Truck traffic in both directions is now moving as usual, according to Ukraine's State Border Guard's statement.
A message by the Blackjack hackers left on the site of the OwenCould.ru. Screenshot taken on April 8, 2024. The Russian-language text reads: "The IT infrastructure was destroyed. Data stored in the cloud servers was deleted. You work in the interests of the Russian Defense Ministry – you are a legitimate target. Accomplices of Putin's criminal regime will be punished."
Ukrainian hackers, possibly connected to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), destroyed a data center used by the Russian military, energy, and telecommunications industries, sources in the SBU told the Kyiv Independent on April 8.
According to the sources, more than 10,000 entities involved in the Russian military industry stored their data in the targeted cloud service OwenCloud.ru.
These reportedly included companies from Russia's oil and gas production or metallurgical and aerospace industry, as well as major telecommunication giants: Ural Works of Civil Aviation, Rubin, Ural Plant Spectechniks, Gazprom, Transgaz, Lukoil, Rosneft, Nornickel, Rostelecom, or MegaFon.
The operation was jointly carried out by the Ukrainian hacker group Blackjack and the cybersecurity department of the SBU, the sources said.
At the moment of the publication, the OwenCloud.ru website displays a message supposedly left by the Blackjack hacker group, saying that the center's "IT infrastructure has been destroyed."
"You work in the interests of the Russian Defense Ministry – you are a legitimate target," the message reads.
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More than 300 terabytes of data were destroyed, the sources said. This included 400 virtual and 42 physical servers that stored internal documents, backup copies, and other programs through which clients remotely managed production at their enterprises, according to the sources.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the claims.
The sources said that the attack on the cloud service was a retaliation for a January hack of the Ukrainian Parkovyi data center.
The SBU's cybersecurity chief, Illia Vitiuk, said in March that the SBU had repelled almost 10,000 cyberattacks since the outbreak of the full-scale war in 2022.
What was arguably the most destructive cyberattack took place in December 2023, when Russian intelligence-linked hackers targeted Kyivstar, Ukraine's leading telecommunications provider, causing communication outages across the country.
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.
Kateryna Denisova
