"We have a plan B and a plan C. But our focus is plan A, the essence of which is to get everyone's support" for Ukraine's accession, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
"(T)he presence at the Victory Parade of a country that bombs cities, hospitals, and daycares, and which has caused the deaths and injuries of over a million people over three years, is a shame," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"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.
Workers load bags of refined white sugar onto an elevator at the ED&F Man Ltd. refinery in Mykolaiv Ukraine. (Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The EU is expected to further curtail imports of key food commodities from war-torn Ukraine, just two weeks after implementing a controversial new preferential trade scheme.
Egg imports from Ukraine have surged to levels that will prompt the Commission to impose restrictions within the next two weeks, an EU spokesperson told Euronews. This follows the recent announcement of restrictions on oat imports from Ukraine, effective until June 5, 2025.
Sugar imports are under scrutiny by the EU executive, according to trade experts familiar with the matter. These actions stem from a recent adjustment — requested and secured by France and Poland — to the temporary suspension of all tariffs and quotas on Ukraine’s agricultural exports, which was introduced following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
"We cannot speculate on the pace of future imports," a spokesperson for the European Commission told Euronews, adding that the EU executive continues to monitor the relevant trigger levels.
In effect since June 6, the new free-trade scheme incorporates an automatic safeguard mechanism designed to protect specific domestic sectors deemed 'sensitive'—including eggs, poultry, sugar, oats, maize, hulled grains, and honey—from a surge in imports due to the lifting of quotas and tariffs.
This allows the European Commission to activate the so-called emergency brake and reintroduce tariff-rate quotas if imports of these commodities surpass the average quantities imported between July 1, 2021, and December 31, 2023.
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Rachel Amran
