"(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.
This photograph taken on Dec. 22, 2022, shows a broken glass box in the looted museum halls at the Kherson Museum, which specializes in local history and natural history in Kherson, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)
The Kyiv Independent identified a Russian military officer and three Russian-appointed officials from occupied Crimea who were responsible for the illegal removal of artworks and artifacts from two Kherson museums in the fall of 2022.
Fleeing a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russian forces collectively stole more than 33,000 historical artifacts and works of art. This museum theft is the largest in Europe since World War II.
Those who oversaw the theft are Dmitry Lipov, head of the communications center of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, who served as the city's commandant during the occupation of Kherson, Sergey Patrushev, appointed by the Russian authorities to head the museum department of the so-called Crimean Ministry of Culture, Elena Morozova and Mikhail Smorodkin, appointed by the Russian authorities as directors of the Crimean museums, Tauric Chersonese and the Museum of Defense of Sevastopol.
The findings are the basis for the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigation Unit's documentary "Curated Theft."
To identify those who took part in the government-sanctioned theft, the Kyiv Independent journalist posed as a Russian TV producer and as a Russian investigator to communicate with local collaborators who helped Russian troops loot.
The Kyiv Independent found that Russian officer Lipov was responsible for securing the collections during their removal and personally sealed the trucks that carried the stolen items.
Patrushev was responsible for moving paintings from the Kherson Art Museum to occupied Crimea.
The directors of the Crimean museums chose items from the Kherson Local History museum's collection during the looting.
The Kyiv Independent also found that the illegal removal of collections from Kherson to occupied Crimea was supervised by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
Yevheniia Motorevska leads the War Crimes Investigations Unit of the Kyiv Independent. She has been working in investigative journalism for over eight years. She has previously served as the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske and headed the video department of the investigative journalism agency Slidstvo.Info. Prior to the onset of the full-scale war, she had been investigating corruption and abuse of power within the judicial and law enforcement systems.
Yevheniia Motorevska
