"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 police vehicle in a convoy leaves the Justice Center. The day before, a driver had driven into a group of people at the Christmas market in Magdeburg. The man was arrested. Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa (Christoph Soeder/picture alliance via Getty Images)
A Ukrainian woman is in serious condition after a car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on the evening of Dec. 20. The incident has claimed five lives and left over 200 people injured, many of them critically.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the woman's nationality on Dec. 21. "Among the victims of the attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg is a Ukrainian citizen born in 1972. She is in a serious condition in a German hospital."
Ukrainian consular officials are coordinating with the hospital to provide necessary assistance to the injured woman, according to the ministry.
Authorities in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, reported that the driver believed to be acting alone, was detained shortly after the attack. Investigators are treating the case as premeditated murder and attempted murder.
German media identified the suspect as a Saudi Arabian who reportedly sympathized with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Magdeburg's City official Ronni Krug expressed the community’s sorrow and shock over the car-ramming attack that left at least five people dead and over 200 injured. "We have been deeply shaken by yesterday’s car-ramming attack," and added that no one in the city’s administration "slept well" following the tragedy.
Krug also announced the closure of Magdeburg’s Christmas market in light of the Dec. 20 fatal incident for reasons that are "self-explanatory," he added.
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.
Martina Sapio
