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.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce speaks to reporters during a press briefing at the State Department in Washington D.C. on March 17, 2025 (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The U.S. did not delete data collected from investigations of Ukrainian children abducted by Russians amid the full-scale war, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on March 19.
The Trump administration cut funding to an initiative led by Yale University that tracked Russian war crimes, including the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. The database included thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia and there were concerns the data may have been deleted.
Bruce clarified the data was not controlled by the State Department and remains intact at a press briefing at the State Department on March 19.
"The data exists, it was not in the State Department’s control. It was the people running that framework, we know who was running the data and the website we know fully that the data exists and (it has) not been deleted and (is) not missing," Bruce said.
The comments come amid the Trump administration's efforts to cut various agencies and initiatives, including foreign aid. The multiple cuts to foreign funding has begun to affect international efforts to hold Russia accountable, including for war crimes committed in Ukraine
Bruce said it was "good news" that the data was not deleted in response to journalists.
"What I can tell you, though, is also that the conspiracy theory or the fear or whatever it was about data being deleted is untrue. So that is false," she said.
Following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 18, U.S. President Donald Trump followed up with President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 19, the spokesperson said.
"President Trump also asked President Zelensky about the children who (have) gone missing from Ukraine during the war, including the ones that had been abducted. President Trump promised to work closely with both parties to help make sure those children were returned home," Bruce said.
Even though funding has been cut to pre-existing frameworks, that does not mean the administration has abandoned its end goals, she said.
Researchers lost access to the database in February when officials terminated a contract with Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab.
Volodymyr Ivanyshyn is a news editor for The Kyiv Independent. He is pursuing an Honors Bachelor of Arts at the University of Toronto, majoring in political science with a minor in anthropology and human geography. Volodymyr holds a Certificate in Business Fundamentals from Rotman Commerce at the University of Toronto. He previously completed an internship with The Kyiv Independent.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
