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.
A serviceman of an artillery unit of the 108th Territorial Defence Brigade fires a weapon while on a combat mission in the Zaporizhzhia direction, Ukraine, on March 31, 2025. (Dmytro Smolienko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
World military spending surged to $2.72 trillion in 2024, marking a 9.4% increase from the previous year and the steepest annual rise since the end of the Cold War, according to a report released on April 28 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Ukraine’s military spending grew by 2.9% in 2024 to reach $64.7 billion, roughly 43% of Russia’s total expenditure. Defense costs accounted for 34% of Ukraine’s GDP—the highest military burden of any country that year, according to SIPRI. "Ukraine currently allocates all of its tax revenues to its military," the institute said, warning that limited fiscal space will make further increases difficult for Kyiv.
The think tank noted that heightened geopolitical tensions drove defense budgets higher across every region, with particularly sharp growth in Europe and the Middle East. "Over 100 countries around the world raised their military spending in 2024," SIPRI said, warning that prioritizing military budgets over other areas could have "significant effects on societies for years to come."
In Europe, military expenditures—including Russia’s—rose by 17%, pushing the continent’s defense spending beyond levels last seen at the end of the Cold War.
The war in Ukraine and uncertainty over U.S. commitment to NATO contributed to the sharp rise. Russia’s military spending reached an estimated $149 billion, a 38% jump from 2023 and double what it spent in 2015. According to SIPRI, this figure accounted for 7.1% of Russia’s GDP and 19% of its government budget.
The United States remained by far the world’s largest military spender, increasing its defense budget by 5.7% to reach $997 billion in 2024. This figure represented 66% of NATO’s military expenditure and 37% of global defense spending. SIPRI’s report highlights that U.S. defense investment drives broader global military trends, especially as tensions rise across multiple regions.
As governments funnel more resources into military security, SIPRI cautioned that the economic and social costs could be substantial: "The economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come."
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.
Olena Goncharova
