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.
The sanctions list includes 58 individuals and 74 companies, with 67 Russian enterprises related to military technology.
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.
Despite the Kremlin's announcement of a May 8–11 truce, heavy fighting continued in multiple regions throughout the front line.
Putin has done in Russia everything that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had been against in Brazil.
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.
Moscow and Washington discuss the potential resumption of Russian gas supplies to Europe, among other issues related to the peaceful settlement of Russia's war in Ukraine, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed to the Russian state-run Interfax news agency.
EU fails to agree on sanctions on Russian LNG, Reuters reports
The EU has shelved the idea of banning Russian liquified natural gas (LNG) imports due to opposition from some members and uncertainty about alternative supplies, Reuters reported on April 16, citing undisclosed EU officials.
This means that restrictions on Russian LNG are unlikely to be part of the EU's upcoming 17th sanctions package.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe began to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels to avoid financing the Kremlin’s war chest.
Despite these efforts, Europe's imports of Russian LNG, which is largely not subject to sanctions, have soared to record levels in 2024. A ban on Russian LNG has been debated for months, but the members have struggled to find consensus on the issue.
U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for the EU to start purchasing U.S. LNG instead, but details of such a potential deal remain unclear.
As economic relations between the U.S. and the EU sour over Trump's new sweeping tariffs, Brussels wants to use Russian LNG supplies as leverage in trade talks with Washington, a European Commission official told Reuters.
The EU is also careful not to create a dependency on the U.S. either, according to the news agency. Trump's sweeping import duties on much of the world, as well as a foreign policy pivot away from European partners and embrace of Moscow, raise concerns in Europe that Washington is no longer a reliable partner.
The European bloc plans to completely phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027, and the European Commission is expected to provide a plan by May 6 – a deadline postponed from March amid uncertainty over Trump's tariffs.
Nina L. Khrushcheva
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