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.
Activists block trucks headed from the European Union to Russia and Belarus, at the Poland-Belarus border. The banner says "No to the war" in Russian. (Inna Parfeniuk/Facebook)
Ukrainian activists are currently blocking trucks from crossing the border from Poland to Belarus.
The activists demanded that the European Union stop its trade with Russia.
"Every product and every euro that feeds the Russian economy kills Ukrainians," they said on a Facebook page devoted to the protest.
One of the Ukrainian activists, Iryna Zemlyana, told the Kyiv Independent there were about 200 protesters on the border. She said the line of trucks currently stretches for more than 30 kilometers.
Zemlyana also said the protest would last until the EU's trade with Russia and Belarus is halted.
Activists block trucks headed from the European Union to Russia and Belarus, at the Poland-Belarus border. (Inna Parfeniuk/Facebook)
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on March 19 effectively backed the demonstrators and proposed an EU embargo on trade with Russia.
This is the second time the activists are blocking the border for Russian and Belarusian trucks. During the previous rally last weekend, on March 12-14, dozens of protesters blocked the border but were eventually pushed away by the police.
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.
