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.
People walk by The Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian people, which was once called Peoples' Friendship Arch, and was renamed after the Russian invasion, on February 11, 2023 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Roman Pilipey/Getty Images)
Ukraine's Ministry of Culture removed the formerly-named Peoples' Friendship Arch from the state register of monuments of national importance due to its association with Russia's ambitions for Soviet reunification, indicating that the monument "may be dismantled."
"The myth of 'reunification' of the two 'fraternal' peoples embodied in the monument does not correspond to historical realities," the Culture Ministry news release on April 17 read. "This myth is actively used to justify (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's territorial claims."
The monument, erected in 1982 for the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Soviet Union and the 65th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, was renamed The Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People by Kyiv City Council in May 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A bronze Soviet-era statute of two Soviet workers that stood under the arch, symbolizing the so-called "friendship of two peoples" between Russia and Ukraine, was also dismantled in April 2022.
According to a BBC Ukraine report published in April 2024, Kyiv City Council has studied the idea of dismantling the arch, however, the monument's protected status outlawed its removal.
No decision on the arch's potential dismantling has been made.
"Despite the renaming by the Kyiv City Council to the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People, the monument represents exclusively Soviet ideological themes and connotations, thus posing a threat to Ukraine's national security," the release read.
The Ukrainian parliament outlawed most Soviet and communist symbols, street names, and moments in 2015 as part of the decommunization process. Monuments around the country have since come down or been changed, although the sheer number of Soviet-era statues and symbols has prolonged the completion of the project.
In April 2023, President Volodymyr Zelensky also signed a law that prohibits naming geographic sites in Ukraine after Russian figures or historical events associated with Russian aggression.
Dmytro Basmat is a senior news editor for The Kyiv Independent. He previously worked in Canadian politics as a communications lead and spokesperson for a national political party, and as a communications assistant for a Canadian Member of Parliament. Basmat has a Master's degree in Political Management from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Governance from Toronto Metropolitan University.
