"Our involvement in the war was justifiable, and this belongs to our sovereign rights," North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said. "I regard this as part of the sacred mission we must execute for our brothers and comrades-in-arms."
"We have a plan B and a plan C. But our focus is plan A, the essence of which is to get everyone's support" for Ukraine's accession, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
"(T)he presence at the Victory Parade of a country that bombs cities, hospitals, and daycares, and which has caused the deaths and injuries of over a million people over three years, is a shame," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"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.
A Russian flag flies above a barricades in an unknown location. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
A court in St. Petersburg sentenced 19-year-old Darya Kozyreva to two years and eight months in a penal colony on April 18 for allegedly "discrediting" the Russian army, including by sticking a quote from a Ukrainian poem onto a monument.
Kozyreva was arrested on Feb. 24, 2024, after she affixed a verse from Taras Shevchenko’s "My Testament" to his statue in St. Petersburg, according to the Russian human rights group OVD-Info. The excerpt read: "Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The freedom you have gained."
A second case was filed against her in August after she gave an interview to Radio Free Europe in which she called Russia’s war in Ukraine "monstrous" and "criminal."
At one of her hearings, Kozyreva defended her actions by saying she had "merely recited a poem, and pasted a quote in Ukrainian, nothing more," the St. Petersburg courts' press service said. Prosecutors reportedly sought a six-year sentence.
"The national flag still flies over Kyiv, and it always will," Kozureva said in her final statement in court, according to Russian independent outlet Mediazona. "I still dream that Ukraine will reclaim every inch of its territory: Donbas, Crimea, all of it. And I believe that one day, it will. History will judge, and judge fairly. But Ukraine has already won. It has won. That’s all."
Kozyreva has been targeted by authorities before.
OVD-Info said she was detained in December 2022 while still in high school for writing, "Murderers, you bombed it. Judases," on a city installation honoring the twinning of St. Petersburg and occupied Mariupol.
She was later fined for "discrediting" the army and expelled from university for a post about the "imperialist nature of the war," according to the human rights group Memorial, which has recognized her as a political prisoner.
"Daria Kozyreva is being punished for quoting a classic of 19th-century Ukrainian poetry, for speaking out against an unjust war and for refusing to stay silent," Amnesty International’s Russia Director Natalia Zviagina said in a statement. "We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Daria Kozyreva and everyone imprisoned under 'war censorship laws.'"
OVD-Info reports that more than 1,500 people are currently jailed in Russia on political grounds, and over 20,000 have been detained for anti-war views since February 2022.
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Kateryna Denisova
