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.
Peter Szijjarto's announcement came after Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) allegedly dismantled a Hungarian military intelligence network operating in Zakarpattia Oblast.
People’s deputies stand during a moment of silence in Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv, Ukraine on Sep. 4, 2024. (Andrii Nesterenko/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
The Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, supported a draft law on the elimination of the system of medical examination commissions (MSEC) for determining the severity of disabilities in the first reading on Nov. 20.
President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree in October to liquidate the commissions in the wake of accusations of Ukrainian officials using corrupt schemes to acquire falsified disability certifications.
A total of 260 members of parliament voted in favor of the bill, said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a member of the Holos party.
Obtaining disability status through medical examination commissions allows one to avoid military service and receive a higher pension, among other social benefits.
The draft law's authors proposed replacing the system of medical examination commissions with "an assessment of a person's daily functioning."
"The system of medical and social expertise that currently exists in Ukraine was formed before Ukraine gained independence. It does not meet the current challenges that our country faces during the armed aggression by the Russian Federation, nor the current approaches to establishing disability adopted in the world," the explanatory note to the draft law read.
The draft law's authors expect that the new system will help create a transparent procedure for assessing the needs of the applicants. The replacement of commissions is expected to reduce the administrative burden and help reduce appeals against their decisions.
Following the National Security and Defense Council meeting on Oct. 22, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Maliuk said that the SBU had exposed corruption schemes at medical examination commissions in 2024, resulting in the cancellation of 4,106 fake disability status certificates.
Maliuk added that 64 officials at medical examination commissions have been charged with committing crimes, while another nine suspects have been convicted.
According to Zelensky's October decree, all commissions in Ukraine are to be eliminated by Dec. 31, 2024. Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin submitted his resignation on Oct. 22 following the reports of prosecutors illegally obtaining disability status.
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.
Anna Belokur
