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.
Peter Szijjarto's announcement came after Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) allegedly dismantled a Hungarian military intelligence network operating in Zakarpattia Oblast.
Ukrainian soldiers drive a tank amid Russia-Ukraine war on the frontline of Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on March 29, 2023. (Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Russian forces have recently "regained some momentum" in the battle for Ukraine's eastern city of Bakhmut after a delay in their advance since late March, the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on April 7.
Russia's regular army, likely including airborne troops, has probably "reinforced the area, and Russia is again using artillery more effectively in the sector," the ministry wrote in its latest intelligence update.
Russian troops have made further progress and highly likely advanced into the city center, capturing the western bank of the Bakhmutka River, according to the report. Ukraine's key supply route, road 0506 west of the city linking the towns of Chasiv Yar and Khromove, is "likely severely threatened" at the moment.
"There is a realistic possibility that, locally, Wagner and Russian MoD commanders have paused their ongoing feud and improved cooperation," reads the update.
The Kremlin-controlled mercenary Wagner Group has been assisting Russia's military in trying to capture Bakhmut for almost eight months as Moscow tries to consolidate its grip over the entirety of Donetsk Oblast. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has publicly criticized Russia's Defense Ministry on numerous occasions for not providing "enough" ammunition to his troops.
Prigozhin admitted on April 6 that Ukrainian forces are not retreating from Bakhmut and said that a Russian offensive is "out of the question" at the moment. It contradicted his own earlier statement that Russian forces "had taken Bakhmut de jure."
Prigozhin claimed on April 2 that his forces had captured the city administration building in Donetsk Oblast's Bakhmut, raising the Russian flag there. The Ukrainian military promptly denied his claims, saying that the building had long been destroyed by shelling.
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The Kyiv Independent news desk
