"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.
A veteran of the Ukrainian Armed Forces puts on a gas mask during a training exercise in Kyiv Oblast on April 28, 2024. (Valentyna Polishchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Ukraine has recorded 6,129 cases of the use of munitions containing hazardous chemicals by Russian troops since February 2023, the Foreign Ministry reported on Feb. 14.
Russia has been intensifying its use of chemical agents on the battlefield in Ukraine. Since the beginning of the all-out war, Ukraine's radiation, chemical, and biological intelligence units have been monitoring and recording the use of hazardous chemicals in attacks.
For a recent report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), experts analyzed the materials provided by Ukraine, including four Russian RG-Vo type gas grenades, as well as soil and grass samples.
Two OPCW laboratories confirmed that they contained riot control agent known as CS. Among other hazardous chemicals, chloroacetophenone (CN), as well as chloropicrin and mercaptans (malodorants) were found, according to the statement.
By using them, Russia violates Article 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Foreign Ministry said.
"The international community must demonstrate its unity in countering the aggressor, and a practical element of this should be the establishment of an international coalition to hold the Russian Federation accountable for the violation of its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention," the statement read.
Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been hospitalized with chemical poisoning, and three have died, Ukrainian Colonel Artem Vlasiuk said in December 2024.
Ukraine struck back at Russia's use of illegal chemical weapons on Dec. 17, when the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) assassinated Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Armed Forces' radiation, chemical, and biological defense troops.
The previous day, Ukrainain prosecutors charged Kirillov in absentia for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine.
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