"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.
US Vice President JD Vance speaks at the Rajasthan International Centre in Jaipur, India, on April 22, 2025 (Prakash Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News on May 1 that the war in Ukraine is not going to end "any time soon."
It is "going to be up to the Russians and Ukrainians now that each side knows what the other's terms for peace are. It's going to be up to them to come to an agreement and stop this brutal, brutal conflict," Vance told Fox News' Bret Baier.
Earlier on April 30, Vance said that the Trump administration is working to broker a "durable solution" to the Russia–Ukraine war within the next 100 days, according to a Fox News Digital interview.
Asked about the state of negotiations, Vance said, "The first and necessary step of getting the Russia-Ukraine conflict solved is to get each of them to make a peace proposal." He added, "We’ve got the peace proposal out there and issued, and we’re going to work very hard over the next 100 days to try to bring these guys together."
The renewed push follows months of diplomacy and comes after U.S. President Donald Trump shifted his campaign promise to end the war "within 24 hours" to a 100-day timeline, which has now passed without a deal.
Ukraine accepted a 30-day U.S.-backed ceasefire in March, but Russia rejected it, demanding an end to Western military aid. Despite calls for peace, Moscow has stepped up attacks against Ukrainian civilians in recent weeks.
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.
Kate Tsurkan
