"I have great hope that an agreement for a ceasefire in Ukraine will be reached this weekend," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on May 9, shortly before traveling to Kyiv alongside the leaders of France, Poland, and the U.K.
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.
Gas pipes and compressor machinery at the Dashava underground gas storage facility in Lviv Oblast on May 28, 2015. (Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Kyiv is in talks to transit gas from Azerbaijan to the EU after the contract to transit Russian gas expires in December 2024, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg on July 3.
Kyiv and the EU have said they would not seek the prolongation of the transit deal for Russian gas at the end of the year. The deal was signed in 2019.
Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Bloomberg in March that he does not "see the possibility" that Russian gas would continue to flow through Ukraine after December.
"Alternative steps are being considered now on how we can use the pipeline with another gas supplier, another country. Negotiations are underway," Zelensky told Bloomberg.
"We don't want to extend the gas contract with the Russian Federation. We don’t want them making money here," he added.
Transiting gas from Azerbaijan instead is "one of the proposals," Zelensky said.
According to Bloomberg, Ukraine earned around $1 billion from transit revenue in 2021, and therefore continuing to use the extensive system of pipelines "would help provide crucial funding for the war-torn economy."
Despite efforts by European countries to reduce dependency on Russia's gas, Russian supplies remain an important part of the EU's imports.
Russia cut much of its pipeline gas transit to Europe in 2022, but countries like Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia remain heavily reliant on Russian imports.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed a deal with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku in July 2022 to bring imports of Azeri natural gas to "at least" 20 billion cubic meters annually by 2027.
Elsa Court
