"According to the participants of the performances, their goal is to remind the civilized world of the barbaric actions of Moscow, which for many years and decades has systematically violated international law," a source in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) told the Kyiv Independent.
"I have great hope that an agreement for a ceasefire in Ukraine will be reached this weekend," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on May 9, shortly before traveling to Kyiv alongside the leaders of France, Poland, and the U.K.
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.
Museum in Moscow on September 18, 2023. (Photo by Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP) (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is exacerbating an emerging identity crisis within Russian society, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes, citing Vostok Battalion Commander Alexander Khodakovsky.
Russian Orthodox ideologue, Khodakovsky published a memo claiming that a schism in Russian national identity has resulted from the “ideological arguments advanced to justify and mobilize support for Russia's war in Ukraine.”
Khodakovsky exposes a dilemma facing Russia as it continues its war in Ukraine; the issue of how to align nationalist ideologies on which the Kremlin uses to justify the war, and the reality of Russia being a highly diverse federal state composed of ethnic republics.
He cited “genetic studies” showing that “Russian genes” were not dominant and concluded that Russian identity is based on morals and ideologies and not ethnogenetic.
ISW writes that “in several ways, the war has narrowed the conception of what it means to be Russian among Russian ideologues, particularly as concepts of identity are increasingly defined by hyper-nationalist and pro-war information space voices who amplify the Kremlin's ideological line on the war and redirect it at domestic audiences.”
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.
Martin Fornusek
