"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.
Protestors outside the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi on April 16, 2024. (Vano Shlamov/AFP via Getty Images)
The Georgian parliament postponed the vote on the first reading of the controversial foreign agents bill to April 17 amid mass protests, local media reported on April 16.
According to officials, the April 16 parliamentary session was supposed to end at 9 p.m. local time. Since the debates on the bill had not finished, the vote had to be pushed to the following day.
The bill, first introduced in 2023 by the ruling Georgian Dream party, would require organizations that receive foreign funding to be labeled as such. Widespread demonstrations broke out in protest of the proposed law, and it was eventually abandoned in March 2023.
The bill became popularly known in Georgia as the "Russian law" for its resemblance to similar legislation passed in Russia. Moscow's "foreign agents" registry has been widely used to target and silence groups and individuals who are critical of the government, including independent journalists, activists, and NGOs.
The Georgian Dream party recently reintroduced the legislation in parliament, renaming it a bill on the "transparency of foreign influence."
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The decision sparked mass protests in the country's capital of Tbilisi, with thousands of protestors chanting "No to Russian law" outside the parliament building.
Even within the parliamentary session, debate over the bill has remained tense. Mamuka Mdinaradze, the leader of Georgian Dream's parliament faction and a key force behind the bill, was punched in the face by opposition MP Aleko Elisashvili while speaking from the dispatch box during an early discussion of the revived bill.
Georgian police reportedly began using tear gas to break up the demonstrations outside parliament during the late hours of April 16, reportedly leading to several injuries and arrests. The official number of those detained is not yet confirmed.
Pawel Herczynski, the EU's ambassador to Georgia, said earlier this week that the foreign agents bill is "incompatible" with European values.
The European Commission offered Georgia candidate status to the EU in November 2023. It is widely believed that the foreign agents law will hurt Georgia's chances of entering the bloc, if passed.
Rachel Amran is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked on the Europe and Central Asia team of Human Rights Watch investigating war crimes in Ukraine. Rachel holds a master's degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Regional Studies from Columbia University.
Nate Ostiller
