This week, the world watched in anticipation for Russia’s Victory Day parade after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented that he could not guarantee the safety of those attending. Meanwhile, the European Union moves one step forward to banning Russian gas from the European continent. It is also revealed this week that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fallen out of step with the White House.
"(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin... doesn't want to have a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the bloodbath. Ukraine should agree to this, immediately," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to to Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting from May 14–16, where he is expected to address the war in Ukraine and push for stronger Allied defense commitments.
The Kremlin said the leaders held a detailed discussion about the Russian initiative and Erdogan expressed full support, reiterating Turkey’s readiness to provide a venue and assist in organizing the negotiations.
Erdogan told Macron that international cooperation is critical for initiating peace negotiations and the "sensitive implementation" of Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction processes, the Turkish Presidency reported.
The assault began around 2 a.m. on May 11, with Russian forces deploying 108 Shahed-type attack drones and decoy UAVs from multiple directions, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
"Think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that will be saved as this never ending 'bloodbath' hopefully comes to an end... I will continue to work with both sides to make sure that it happens."
Photo illustration of Russian hacker with a laptop. (BeeBright via Getty Images)
A Russian-speaking criminal group known as CL0P breached the email addresses of 632,000 employees from the U.S. Justice and Defense departments in May, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 30 following a Freedom of Information Act request.
The report issued by the Office of Personnel Management says hackers used flaws in the file-transfer system MOVEit to gain access to wide-ranging sensitive information.
OPM has classified the May hack as a “major incident.”
Pentagon employees most impacted include officials from the Air Force, the Army, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff.
U.S. airlines, universities, and other federal agencies have also been affected by Russia-linked cyberattacks.
The scale and depth of Russia-linked cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies is still unknown.
“We’ve been working closely … with the FBI and with our federal partners to understand prevalence within federal agencies,” a U.S. cybersecurity official told Politico earlier this year.
Lance Luo (Li P. Luo) is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. Previously, he worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Hromadske Television in Kyiv. He also spent three years in finance and strategy consulting. Mr. Luo graduated from the University of Southern California and serves as an arbitrator at FINRA.
Steven Pifer
