"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.
Olga Rudenko, the editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv Independent Editor-in-Chief Olga Rudenko has been shortlisted for the Gongadze Prize, a Ukrainian prize for independent journalism.
The winner of the prize will be announced on May 21, on the birthday of Georgiy Gongadze, a prominent investigative journalist and co-founder of the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, who was killed in 2000.
Gongadze, a critic of then-president Leonid Kuchma, was kidnapped on Sept. 16, 2000. Two months later, his headless body was found in a forest some 70 kilometers outside Kyiv.
The award was founded in 2019 by PEN Ukraine, the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, and Ukrainska Pravda.
The other finalists are investigative journalist Anna Babinets and journalist and radio host Tetyana Troshchynska.
The prize is awarded to journalists who "are not afraid of challenges," who contribute to the introduction of liberal reforms in Ukraine," and who "open up new opportunities for the entire media environment."
The 2023 prize was awarded to Bohdan Logvinenko, founder of the Ukrainer project.
Rudenko has also recently been selected for the list of Ukrainska Pravda's Power of Women, a list of 100 Ukrainian women who bring "victory closer with daily work, self-sacrifice, and care for the next generations of Ukrainians."
Martin Fornusek
