"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.
A picture taken on Feb. 4, 2025, shows optical reconnaissance with binoculars and documentation with a camera from the bridge deck of patrol ship HMS Carlskrona (P04) on open water near Karlskrona, Sweden, as part of the NATO Baltic Sea patrol mission the Baltic Sentry. (Johan Nilsson / TT NEWS AGENCY / AFP via Getty Images)
The Swedish authorities have launched a sabotage investigation after an undersea telecoms cable was damaged in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish newspaper Goteborgs-Posten reported on Feb. 21.
The news comes following a string of cases of damaged undersea infrastructure in the region, with some officials connecting the incidents to hybrid attacks and Russia's "shadow fleet."
The fiber-optic cable running between Finland and Germany was damaged near Gotland Island within the Swedish exclusive economic zone, Sweden's Coast Guard said.
The Finnish telecom operator Cinia described the damage as minor and said it did not impact the cable's functionality. According to the Finnish media, this is the third time the cable has been damaged in a short span of time.
The Swedish Coast Guard said the incident was first recorded on Feb. 20, but it remains unclear when it occurred.
"We take all reports of potential damage to infrastructure in the Baltic Sea very seriously," Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on X.
"As I have already said, these incidents must be viewed in the context of the existing serious security situation."
NATO has ramped up its presence in the Baltic Sea following multiple cases of damaged infrastructure, deploying additional patrol vessels to ward off potential sabotage.
While Russian-linkedvessels have been detained in connection to the incidents, some voices in the U.S. and European intelligence community believe them to be the result of simple accidents.
The suspicions nevertheless add to the tensions between NATO and Russia as the West threw its support behind Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion.
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.
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