The disclosure follows a warning from Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who on May 6 said Moscow was carrying out an "unprecedented" interference campaign.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had appealed to his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, to ask Putin if he was willing to conclude a peace agreement.
Earlier reporting from the Washington Post cited a former Russian official who claimed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, would represent Moscow in the talks.
The Council of Europe on May 14 approved the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russia's top leadership for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, Ukrainian lawmaker Maria Mezentseva reported.
Viktoria Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories. Moscow admitted she was in Russian detention the following year.
Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel speaks about the future of the EU-led special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine and its role in bringing Russia to justice.
Turkish officials told Bloomberg that while they don't expect Trump to visit Istanbul, they are not ruling it out, and preparations for any scenario are underway.
Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023 in connection with the activities of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which was co-founded by Golos's legal predecessor, the Golos association.
Ukraine's underground storage facilities are currently using 19.4% of their capacity. Almost 32%, or 2.79 bcm, less gas is available in the storages than in the previous year, according to the estimates.
The majority of Ukrainians, 71%, do not support holding elections before a full peace deal, even in the case of a ceasefire and security guarantees, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) on May 14.
"He'd like me to be there, and that's a possibility. ... I don't know that he would be there if I'm not there. We're going to find out," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Qatar, Reuters reported.
Trump has long demanded that NATO allies increase their military spending, previously calling for the alliance to raise its benchmark from 2% to 5% of GDP.
First responders work around the destroyed shopping mall that was hit by Russia's massive strike on Dnipro on Dec. 29, 2023. Russia's air attack killed at least six and injured 30 people in Dnipro, according to the local authorities. The strikes on Dnipro were part of Russia's largest air attack against Ukraine that targeted multiple cities across the country with 158 missiles and drones. (Photo by Ozge Elif Kizil/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Russia faced strong criticism during the UN Security Council session on Dec. 29 following the largest air attack against Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war. The urgent meeting of the 15-member council was convened at the request of Kyiv and its allies to address the strike.
"Tragically, 2023 is ending as it began – with devastating violence against the people of Ukraine," UN Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari said after briefing the council on the situation. "Once again, Ukrainians are forced to spend the holidays seeking shelter, clearing the rubble, and burying the dead, amidst freezing temperatures."
Several council members, including the United States, France, and Britain, expressed condemnation of the attacks on Ukraine.
While the number of casualties has yet to be finalized, an estimated 30 people were killed and 160 were injured across Ukraine as a result of the attack. Casualties and large-scale damage to civilian sites were reported in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia.
"Rather than peace, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin chose to mark this holiday season and usher in the New Year with an unprecedented number of drone and missile strikes against another UN member state," said U.S. Minister-Counselor John Kelley.
"We expect Russia will claim it only attacks military targets, even when the evidence is clear for the world to see. The Kremlin’s rhetoric and lies do not erase or conceal the horrifying wreckage across the country and thousands of innocent lives lost since the start of its war," Kelley added.
Russia's Ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, asserted in an extensive reply that Russia had "exclusively targeted military infrastructure in Ukraine" and attributed civilian casualties to Ukraine's air defense systems.
Responding to this, the UK's Ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said that Russia's actions were the singular factor behind the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. "The rest is a torrent of lies and disinformation," Woodward concluded.
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Daria Shulzhenko
