"(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.
The logo of the Russian Railways company seen on a train at the Sosnovo railway station in the Leningrad region of Russia on Sept. 3, 2022. (Maksim Konstantinov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Russian Railways company was hit by a large-scale cyberattack on April 1, the company said, as the website and app became inaccessible.
The state-owned Russian railway operator described the incident as a "massive DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack," saying that efforts to restore operations are underway.
The news follows a cyberattack against Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) on March 23, which also rendered its website and app inaccessible and prevented online ticket purchases for days.
Ukraine said that the attack against Ukrainian Railways resembled the tactics of Russian intelligence services.
Downdetector.su, a website monitoring website crashes, recorded a spike of complaints about Russian Railways' website at 11:45 a.m. local time, with 489 users reporting problems at the time. The website remains inaccessible as of 2:15 p.m.
It remains unclear who was behind the cyberattack. Russian Railways said their ticket offices at train stations are operating as usual.
The disruption came only a day after the Moscow Metro app became inaccessible, with its website displaying Ukrainian Railways' statement about its technical failure.
Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He was also volunteering as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukraïner. Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.
Yana Prots
