"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.
A screenshot of a video of emergency workers from Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry battling a fire at an oil production facility in Omsk, Russia, on April 25, 2024. (Russian Emergency Situations Ministry)
A fire broke out at an oil production facility in the Siberian city of Omsk on April 25, according to Russian media.
The state-run media outlet TASS, citing Omsk Oblast's Governor Vitaly Khotsenko, said the fire was assessed to be at a medium danger level and that emergency workers were on the scene.
The press service of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement that three 200-liter containers of petroleum products were on fire at an undisclosed location.
There was no comment from either Khotsenko or the ministry on the suspected cause of the fire.
Omsk is located in central Siberia, north of the Kazakh border. The city of more than 1 million people is some 3,000 kilometers (~1,860 miles) east of Ukraine.
Drones of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) attacked two oil depots in Russia's Smolensk Oblast overnight, destroying 26,000 cubic meters of fuel, sources in law enforcement agencies told the Kyiv Independent on April 24.
Kateryna Hodunova
