Moscow and Hanoi agreed to negotiate and sign agreements to construct nuclear power plants in Vietnam, the two countries said in a joint statement on May 11.
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 Federal Palace, Switzerland's parliament building, in Bern, Switzerland, March 2023. (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Switzerland is ramping up efforts to prevent companies and individuals from using the country to circumvent sanctions imposed against Russia, Reuters reported on Feb. 21.
Despite its long-standing policy of neutrality, the Alpine country has joined the international sanctions imposed against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and provided Kyiv with humanitarian, political, and economic aid.
Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said it had launched an investigative task force to enforce the sanctions and investigate potential breaches. Some 230 have been recorded since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
This has so far led to 47 proceedings, of which 20 were dropped, and nine resulted in fines of various severity. The majority of them were related to breaches in the luxury goods trade or products that were important for Russia's war effort.
Switzerland's Federal Prosecutor's Office announced last week that it is also looking into several cases of possible breaches.
The Group of Seven (G7) countries criticized Bern last year for slow progress in cracking down on sanctions circumvention and in freezing Russian assets.
According to Reuters, some 7.7 billion Swiss francs ($8.5 billion) out of an estimated 150 billion Swiss francs ($170.4 billion) in Russian assets held in Swiss accounts were frozen in 2023.
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.
Martin Fornusek
