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.
A woman fills a syringe with Covid-19 vaccine at one of the vaccination centers in Kyiv on June 5, 2021. (kyivcity.gov.ua)
Kyiv has detected its first cases of the highly transmissible Omicron strain of coronavirus, Deputy Head of the City Administration Mykola Povoroznyk said on Dec. 28.
The official called on Kyiv residents to adhere to the yellow zone restrictions in place, requiring proof of at least partial vaccination, negative test or recent recovery to attend restaurants and other venues.
Ukraine detected its first Omicron case on Dec. 18, but back then the government didn't specify where in the country it was detected.
The number of new cases of Covid-19 in Ukraine has been decreasing lately: it went from over 10,000 a day in early December to under 5,000 a day in late December.
Researchers are concerned about the Omicron strain's large number of mutations. One not yet peer-reviewed study by researchers in Hong Kong found that it infects the airways and multiplies there 70 times faster than the Delta variant. This can explain the speed of its global spread since its discovery in Botswana and South Africa in November. It has already become the dominant version of the coronavirus in the United States.
Though Omicron appears to be less susceptible to vaccines than the earlier variants, boosters can help build stronger defenses against the virus. Unvaccinated individuals are at the greatest risk of severe illness and death from the new variant, according to health experts.
Right now, booster shots of Moderna or Comirnaty/Pfizer mRNA are available to healthcare workers, orphanage employees and people at high risk from the virus in Ukraine.
Ukraine still hasn’t rolled out COVID-19 booster jabs yet. As of Dec. 28, the country has fully vaccinated over 13.4 million people or 35% of its general population.
Asami Terajima is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent covering Ukrainian military issues, front-line developments, and politics. She is the co-author of the weekly War Notes newsletter. She previously worked as a business reporter for the Kyiv Post focusing on international trade, infrastructure, investment, and energy. Originally from Japan, Terajima moved to Ukraine during childhood and completed her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in the U.S. She is the winner of the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism 2023 (Local Reporter category) and the George Weidenfeld Prize, awarded as part of Germany's Axel Springer Prize 2023. She was also featured in the Media Development Foundation’s “25 under 25: Young and Bold” 2023 list of emerging media makers in Ukraine.
