The sanctions appear to be in response to Russia's rejection of a 30-day ceasefire that the U.K., alongside Ukraine, France, Germany, and Poland, demanded during a visit to Kyiv on May 10.
"We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X. "Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and searched for."
The publications' latest report covers the period of February 24, 2022 to May 8, 2025. Since it was last updated at the end of April, 2,857 additional Russian military personnel have been confirmed killed.
Hungary cancelled a meeting planned for May 12 with a Ukrainian delegation on the rights of national minorities, Hungary's Deputy Foreign Minister said on May 11, amid a deepening spying scandal between the two countries.
Three were injured in Russia's Kursk Oblast when the town of Rylsk was allegedly struck by a missile attack on May 11, local governor Alexander Khinshtein claimed.
This week, the world watched in anticipation for Russia’s Victory Day parade after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented that he could not guarantee the safety of those attending. Meanwhile, the European Union moves one step forward to banning Russian gas from the European continent. It is also revealed this week that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fallen out of step with the White House.
"(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin... doesn't want to have a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the bloodbath. Ukraine should agree to this, immediately," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to to Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting from May 14–16, where he is expected to address the war in Ukraine and push for stronger Allied defense commitments.
The Kremlin said the leaders held a detailed discussion about the Russian initiative and Erdogan expressed full support, reiterating Turkey’s readiness to provide a venue and assist in organizing the negotiations.
Iryna Venediktova the General Prosecutor of Ukraine is seen during a meeting in Mariupol on June 24, 2020. (don.gp.gov.ua)
The Supreme Court threw out a Hr 150,000 ($5,500) libel lawsuit filed by Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova against online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda and the Anti-Corruption Action Center, Ukrainska Pravda reported on Dec. 21, citing the ruling.
Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court and the Kyiv Court of Appeal had sided with Venediktova but the Supreme Court overturned their decisions.
The Supreme Court cited the European Court of Human Rights and argued that the limits on criticism of publicly exposed persons are much broader than for ordinary people.
"The Supreme Court fully agreed with our arguments,” said Ukrainska Pravda’s lawyer, Oleksandr Lytvyn. “The information is in the public interest and is an evaluation. We did not claim that Venediktova committed any crime, as her lawyer wrote. Also, the head of the prosecutor’s office had no right to claim compensation for non-pecuniary damages.”
Venediktova sued Ukrainska Pravda and the anti-corruption watchdog in 2020, demanding they retract information in an article about the growing influence of then-Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Experts from the Anti-Corruption Action Center wrote the article and Ukrainska Pravda published it.
Specifically, Venediktova referred to the statement that her husband, police official Denys Kolesnyk, influenced the State Investigation Bureau’s human resource policy when she headed the bureau in 2019-2020. Ukrainska Pravda reported that Venediktova had appointed Ruslan Biryukov as an adviser due to Kolesnyk’s influence.
This is not the only recent clash between Venediktova and independent media.
Brian Bonner, the ex-chief editor of the Kyiv Post, told the Ukrainian Weekly in November that after the Kyiv Post ran a critical story about Venediktova in 2020, he was invited to her office where he faced “pressure.” Venediktova had also threatened the Kyiv Post with a lawsuit.
The Kyiv Post ran another critical article about Venediktova on Sept. 3, after which Bonner said she opened criminal cases against the newspaper’s owner, Odesa tycoon Adnan Kivan. The cases were later closed, he said.
Kivan shut down the Kyiv Post and fired all of its staff on Nov. 8. The newspaper was re-launched a month later but not a single member of the former editorial team joined the renewed Kyiv Post.
In response, Venediktova stated that she never pressured anybody or even met Kivan, who has also denied allegations of pressure.
The former editorial team of the Kyiv Post launched the Kyiv Independent on Nov. 11.
Oleg Sukhov is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is a former editor and reporter at the Moscow Times. He has a master's degree in history from the Moscow State University. He moved to Ukraine in 2014 due to the crackdown on independent media in Russia and covered war, corruption, reforms and law enforcement for the Kyiv Post.
