"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.
The Russian Navy’s Kilo-class submarine Rostov-on-Don B-237 enters the Bosphorus Strait en route to the Black Sea on February 13, 2022, in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo for illustrative purposes. (Burak Kara/Getty Images)
Russia sent Kilo-class attack submarines close to the Irish Sea on two separate occasions since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Bloomberg reported on July 1, citing unnamed sources.
Russian submarines have been repeatedly deployed near the maritime borders of its Western foes. A Russian nuclear-powered submarine arrived in Cuba in June on what the Russian Defense Ministry called a training exercise. At the same time, U.S. officials characterized the trip as an attempt for Russia to show that it could still project naval strength after a series of successful Ukrainian strikes on Moscow's Black Sea Fleet.
According to the sources, the first instance that a Russian kilo-class submarine approached the Irish Sea, which separates the island of Ireland from Great Britain, was a little less than two years ago. Another incident occurred more recently, but the sources did not specify exactly when.
The sources said that the U.S. was "aware" of the submarines' presence in the Irish Sea, but the U.K. Defense Ministry said it "doesn't comment on operations." The Irish Defense Department also declined to comment.
According to the unnamed sources, the deployment of the submarines "could be an attempt to identify potential weaknesses in British and Irish Sea defenses, or to try to intimidate the U.K. in response to its support for Ukraine."
Irish media reported in 2023 that a U.K. helicopter and battleship "chased off" a Russian submarine off of Ireland's Cork Harbor.
Ireland is not a member of NATO, and has one of the lowest rates of defense spending across the EU, at around 0.2% of its GDP. As a result, it has effectively outsourced much of its defense to the U.K. and does not have the capability to respond to naval threats, such as the presence of Russian submarines off its coast.
Nate Ostiller
