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.
Both men face charges related to terrorism and espionage. Daniil B. was detained in Lithuania, where he is in temporary custody, while Oleksandr V. remains at large in Russia.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine and its allies discussed tougher sanctions against Russia's banking sector, central bank, and energy industry.
"We are ready for all options. But of course, we are separately waiting for a response on the ceasefire," a source close to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Kyiv Independent.
The EU plans to unveil on May 14 its next package of sanctions imposed against Russia over its aggression against Ukraine, an EU official told the Kyiv Independent on condition of anonymity.
Polish truckers plan to restrict freight traffic at the Yahodyn-Dorohusk checkpoint on the Ukrainian border, Ukraine's State Border Guard said on May 12.
"If the Russians are using this level of specialists in urban combat, they are probably facing some difficulties," Ivan Petrychak, spokesperson for the 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade, said.
Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinskyi during a court session on Aug. 10, 2023, in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Vitalii Nosach /Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Ukraine's Bureau of Investigation charged lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinskyi with high treason.
Although the report did not name the current MP by name, Dubinskyi’s spokesperson told the Kyiv Independent that the searches at his place are currently ongoing.
"Oleksandr will comment after they are done," Dubinskyi’s spokesperson said.
According to Ukraine's Security Service, Dubinskyi, code-named Buratino (Pinocchio), is allegedly one of several current and former officials involved in the scheme. The criminal organization also included former MP Andrii Derkach, whose Ukrainian citizenship was stripped in January 2023 for treason and his involvement with pro-Russian parties.
Derkach faced treason charges on the grounds that he received funds from a Russian intelligence agency to create private security firms that Russia planned to use for capturing Ukraine.
Dubinskyi testified against his former partner in the treason case.
Derkach was specifically named in the SBU's report, as well as former prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk, and Ihor Koliesnikov, a former assistant to Derkach.
Koliesnikov has already been convicted of treason on a different charge and is currently in prison.
The alleged scheme was directed by agents from Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU) and was aimed at spreading disinformation about Ukraine's government, sowing division between the U.S. and Ukraine, and slowing down the process of Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO.
More than $10 million was funneled into the scheme, the SBU said.
Earlier on Nov. 13, Ukrainska Pravda reported that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies were allegedly searching Dubinskyi's premises in connection to a case of a "criminal organization to discredit the image of Ukraine on the international stage."
Ukrainska Pravda claimed that the current case is related to a disinformation campaign involving both Dubinskyi and Derkach, which reached the highest levels of the Ukrainian and American governments.
Dubinskyi and Derkach pushed conspiracy theories that involved Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, who sat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, as well as Mykola Zlochevskyi, the company's founder and a former minister under former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
They repeated the claims elsewhere as well. The allegations that either President Biden or his son were involved in unlawful actions associated with Burisma have been widely debunked.
Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said at the time that the charges were "not credible" and that Dubinskyi and Derkach were "professional disinformers."
The conspiracies then went viral in the U.S. in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election, fueled in part by a wider campaign among political opponents of Biden who sought to use his son's activities in Ukraine against him.
Derkach and Dubinskyi were later sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2021 for their work with Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer of former President Donald Trump, to undermine Biden's presidential campaign.
The U.S. Treasury said that Derkach was "acting as an agent of the Russian intelligence services" and, along with Dubinskyi and three other former Ukrainian officials, worked together on a scheme that "coordinated dissemination and promotion of fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations involving a U.S. political candidate (Biden)."
The conspiracy theories involving Biden and his son were the center of the political scandal that resulted in Trump's first impeachment charge, in which he allegedly threatened President Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019 that he would cut off aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky initiated an investigation into Biden and his son.
Despite the political scandals and subsequent sanctions from the U.S., Dubinskyi remained in office. He is currently an independent MP, having been removed from President Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People party in 2021 for "violating the statute and disobeying the party's governing bodies."
Elsa Court
