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.
For illustrative purposes: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Sept. 11, 2022. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry protested on March 2 against International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff passing through occupied territories to carry out a rotation at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant but blamed the situation on Russian blackmail.
Moscow's "systematic attempts to impose illegal and contradictory operational mechanisms on international organizations" led to "violations of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity" by several IAEA staff members, the ministry said.
The statement came hours after Russian occupation authorities claimed that a rotation of IAEA personnel had taken place through Russian-controlled territory.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry accused Russia of obstructing the rotation of IAEA staff at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and keeping inspectors under "unprecedented psychological pressure in a high-risk zone."
Inspectors from the IAEA, stationed at the Russian-occupied facility to monitor risks and ensure the safety of operations, are meant to rotate every 80 days. The ministry said Russian forces had blocked staff rotations through Ukrainian-controlled territory.
"We consider the actions of the IAEA not as a rotation of experts at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant but as a humanitarian evacuation under conditions that threaten the lives and health of the agency's staff," the Foreign Ministry said in an apparent dismissal of the IAEA's capabilities of handling the situation on the ground.
The IAEA has not yet commented.
The largest nuclear plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, has been under Russian occupation since 2022. While the facility remains under Russian control, it is not currently generating electricity.
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Kate Tsurkan
