"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 locomotive body with the inscription "Ukrzaliznytsia" on March 22, 2022 in Lviv, Ukraine. (Stanislav Ivanov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia) was the target of a large-scale and sophisticated cyberattack, the company said on March 24, adding that the restoration of all systems is ongoing.
"Ukrzaliznytsia's online systems have been subjected to a large-scale, targeted cyberattack," the state railway operator said in a statement.
The company's website and application became unavailable on March 23 over a "technical failure," the company said earlier.
Both Russia and Ukraine have broadly employed cyberattacks during the full-scale war, with multiple Ukrainian companies and state agencies being targeted by hackers in the past three years.
The perpetrators failed to disrupt railway traffic, as trains ran without delay, the company said. Due to previous cyberattacks, the railway operator had backup protocols in place.
Ukrainian Railways called the attack "systemic and "multi-level" and said it was orchestrated by "the enemy." The company's specialists are working with specialists from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to restore backup data.
Online ticket purchases remain unavailable as the company prepares to work offline on March 24.
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.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
