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.
Photo for illustrative purpose. Ukrainian soldiers prepare the M777 artillery in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, on 15 Aug., 2024. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Russia's artillery advantage against Ukraine is diminishing, dropping to 1.5 rounds for each Ukrainian shell, Sky News reported on Dec. 5, citing unnamed Western officials.
The current decline is due to a "wide variety of factors," Western officials told Sky News on the condition of anonymity. These include production and transport difficulties, along with Ukrainian drone strikes against ammunition depots.
Shipments of Western ammunition supplies have also helped Ukraine level out the disparity.
Russia is still finding other ways to maintain fighting power, officials said, pointing to Russia's increased use of glide bombs.
There has been a "massive increase in Russian glide bomb use on the front line to devastating effect," one official said.
Ammunition shortages have plagued Ukraine over the course of Russia's full-scale invasion. The EU failed to deliver on its promise to produce 1 million artillery shells between March 2023 and 2024 while political disputes in Washington led to a severe delay in a $61 billion aid package.
"Russia vastly outnumbers us in daily artillery attacks," Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said at an artillery coalition session on Jan. 18.
"At different areas of the front and stages of hostilities, they fired five to 10 times more artillery shells than the Ukrainian forces."
Before Ukraine acquired Western-provided NATO-standard 105- and 155-millimeter artillery systems and munitions, the disparity between rounds fired daily by Ukrainian and Russian units in some cases reached a ratio of 50 to 1,500, according to sources in Ukraine's military.
Ukraine has now received more than a third of the 500,000 155 mm shells expected to be delivered under the Czech ammunition initiative by the end of 2024.
Even as Ukraine narrows the ammunition gap, Russian forces continue to gain ground in Ukraine's east, seizing territory at heavy personnel costs.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
