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.
Artists showcase aerial hoop performance at the Zaporizhzhia State Circus, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Feb. 11, 2024. (Andriy Andriyenko/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Ukraine's Culture Ministry has recognized a number of TV channels, circuses, and other cultural institutions as "critically important" companies during wartime, allowing some of their employees to defer military service, according to decrees published on the ministry's website.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently approved laws to lower the minimum age of compulsory military service from 27 to 25, allowing younger men to be mobilized, create the online register for conscripts, and cancel the "partially eligible" status in the military medical examinations.
Since the beginning of 2024, the Culture Ministry has issued decrees designating dozens of media companies and TV channels, including those participating in Ukraine's TV marathon, "as critically important for the functioning of the economy and ensuring the livelihood of the population in a special period."
This status has also been given to the Directorate of Mobile Circus Teams, the State Circus Company, as well as several circuses, theaters, operas and other cultural institutions across Ukraine.
Current rules in Ukraine allow the deferment of military service to 50% or more of the employees of "critically important" companies.
As of February, 143 Ukrainian enterprises, institutions and organizations in the field of culture and information policy were recognized as "critically important," according to Ukrainian media outlet Interfax-Ukraine.
Francis Farrell
