"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.
Flag with the logo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 29, 2022, in The Hague, Netherlands. (Photo: Alex Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
A Moscow court ordered an arrest in absentia of Reine Alapini-Gansou, the second vice-president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the independent news outlet Mediazona reported on Nov. 13.
The case against Alapini-Gansou was launched under the article of "illegal detention," Mediazona reported without providing additional details. She has also been placed on the wanted list, the court told the Interfax news agency.
Russia has extensively used lawfare to pressure and intimidate ICC judges since the Hague court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and official Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.
A Beninese jurist with extensive experience in women's rights and human rights advocacy, Alapini-Gansou was elected to the ICC in 2018. Earlier this year, she became a deputy to the ICC's president, Tomoko Akane, who issued the arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023. Russia opened an investigation into Akane and other judges soon after.
The arrest warrant against Alapini-Gansou, who was one of the judges who issued arrest warrants against Moscow's proxies in South Ossetia over alleged war crimes during the 2008 Georgia war, comes only days after a Russian warrant in absentia for another ICC judge, Haykel Ben Mahfoudh.
Ben Mahfoudh was a member of a panel that issued an arrest warrant for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov over suspected war crimes in Ukraine.
The Tunisian lawyer and a specialist in international law was elected to the ICC for a nine-year term in March 2024.
Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and Admiral Viktor Sokolov "are each allegedly responsible" for a number of war crimes, including "directing attacks at civilian sites," the court said.
Volodymyr Hryshko
