"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.
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.
Some 22% of Ukrainians recruited by Russian intelligence services to prepare sabotage acts or terrorist attacks in the country are minors, Artem Dekhtiarenko, the spokesperson of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said on April 2.
The SBU regularly reports detentions of suspected Russian agents, exposing and preventing terrorist acts prepared by Russian security services against military and civilian targets.
For their tasks, Russian intelligence services tend to recruit unemployed people, as well as people with criminal records or various types of addictions, according to the SBU's data.
"According to our statistics, 22% of the detected criminals are minors, 55% are unemployed, and 7% of the perpetrators have previously been convicted of various crimes," Dekhtiarenko said.
"These people are more easily swayed by psychological manipulations because young people are not able to assess the consequences of their actions fully, and addicts need money at any cost," he added.
The youngest executors of Russian orders, whom the SBU exposed for setting fire to Ukrainian Railways' (Ukrzaliznytsia) railroad switchboards, were 13-year-old teenagers. The oldest was a 52-year-old man who tried to place explosives in the Dnipro River, according to Dekhtiarenko.
Vasyl Bohdan, head of the Juvenile Prevention Department of Ukraine's National Police, said that the police are currently seeing a decrease in the number of cases of child recruitment compared to last year, while the number of reports of attempts to recruit children has increased.
Citing teenagers who have been recruited, the police identified several reasons why minors agree to such cooperation: material gain, psychological manipulation techniques based on a sense of adventure, romanticization of crime, and blackmail.
"Having some sensitive information about the child, either personal or related to simple tasks already completed, the handler can blackmail them into disclosing it," Bohdan said.
Kateryna Hodunova is a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a sports journalist in several Ukrainian outlets and was the deputy chief editor at Suspilne Sport. Kateryna covered the 2022 Olympics in Beijing and was included in the Special Mentions list at the AIPS Sport Media Awards. She holds a bachelor's degree in political journalism from Taras Shevchenko University and a master's degree in political science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Kateryna Hodunova
