"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 $24 billion in cargo since 2024, according to Downing Street. The U.K. has now sanctioned more shadow fleet vessels than any other country.
Washington and its partners are considering additional sanctions if the parties do not observe a ceasefire, with political and technical negotiations between Europe and the U.S. intensifying since last week, Reuters' source said.
The Kyiv Independent’s contributor Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke spent a day with a mobile team from the State Emergency Service in Nikopol in the south of Ukraine as they responded to relentless drone, artillery, and mortar strikes from Russian forces just across the Dnipro River. Nikopol is located across from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar.
Illustrative purposes only: A European Union flag flies in front of the District Court in Burgas, Bulgaria, on March 13, 2024. (Michaela Vatcheva/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Ukraine has received 1 billion euro ($ 1.1 billion) from the European Union under the G7's Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) initiative, the European Commission announced on May 8.
The ERA mechanism, totaling $50 billion, provides loans to Ukraine that will be repaid using future profits from frozen Russian assets.
This is the fourth such tranche from the bloc which is secured by proceeds from frozen Russian assets.
The EU's contribution to the initiative totals 18.1 billion euros ($20.4). With the recent payment, the Commission's total lending to Ukraine under this MFA has reached 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) since the start of the year, the statement read.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said that the government will use the funds to "cover critical budget expenditures and strengthen the state."
"It is part of a consistent and just response: the aggressor must pay for the devastation it has caused," Shmyhal wrote on X.
"We are counting on further steps — full confiscation of assets and toughening sanctions in response to Russia's continued atrocities," he added.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, G7 countries have frozen approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets.
The ERA initiative, backed primarily by the U.S. and the EU, aims to use profits from these frozen assets to finance Ukraine's defense and reconstruction.
Previously, in March, Ukraine received the first tranche of 2.5 billion Canadian dollars (about $1.7 billion) from Ottawa and 752 million pounds ($970 million) as the first installment of the U.K.'s contribution to the G7 loan.
Kateryna Hodunova is a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a sports journalist in several Ukrainian outlets and was the deputy chief editor at Suspilne Sport. Kateryna covered the 2022 Olympics in Beijing and was included in the Special Mentions list at the AIPS Sport Media Awards. She holds a bachelor's degree in political journalism from Taras Shevchenko University and a master's degree in political science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Liliane Bivings
