Ukraine Breaking News Today Live on 05-02-2025

Critics of the decision told Reuters the move means that more compensation for Ukraine will have to come from European treasuries rather than from Russia.

Belgian clearing firm Euroclear plans to seize and redistribute about €3 billion ($3.4 billion) of Russia’s frozen sovereign funds and compensate Western investors after Moscow seized cash held in Russia in recent months, Reuters reported. 

Euroclear will redirect the cash from a pool belonging to Russian entities and individuals hit by EU sanctions following Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Reuters wrote, citing its sources. 

The ministry called on citizens, “particularly young people who wish to pursue their studies abroad, to exercise utmost vigilance,” especially to Russia.

People from the small West African nation Togo have been “captured and detained” by Ukrainian armed forces after taking part “in military operations alongside Russian armed forces,” Togolese authorities said Friday. 

In a statement seen by AFP, Togo’s foreign ministry said that the “majority of compatriots, in particular young students, had left Togo under alleged scholarships offered by structures claiming to be based in Russia.” 

All core businesses of Ukraine’s Naftogaz Group showed growth in 2024, with gas production driving the most substantial gains, according to the company.

Ukraine’s state-owned gas giant, Naftogaz Group, has registered a net profit increase in 2024 despite Russian attacks. 

The company posted a net profit of Hr.38 billion ($920.1 million) in 2024 – a Hr.15 billion, or 64%, increase from the previous year, according to its Thursday press release.

Greek media have reported that the intermediary was a Georgian man with organized crime links living in Lithuania.

Greek authorities have arrested a man in the strategic port city of Alexandroupolis on suspicion of photographing supply convoys on behalf of Russia, police said.

The suspect, a 59-year-old Greek of Georgian descent, was arrested in the northeastern city on Tuesday and on Friday was taken before an investigating magistrate, according to police and media reports.

The latest White House party line is that Moscow and Kyiv foolishly ignored Donald J. Trump’s brilliant diplomatic and deal-making skills, so now the war and ending it is their problem.

A 100-day attempt by the United States led by President Donald J. Trump to impose a quick end to the Russo-Ukrainian War has failed and so the White House will wash its hands of the mess and move on, administration officials admitted on Thursday.

Trump, a New York real estate mogul serving as the US Chief Executive once before, from 2016-2020, during campaigning for a second term claimed his deal-making skills would bring peace to Ukraine and Russia “in 24 hours” or even before taking office. However, in a late April interview with Time magazine, Trump told an interviewer he had been “joking” somewhat.

As the war rages on, head of Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Committee Oleksandr Merezhko, argues the US remains Ukraine’s key ally, despite global shifts – and it won’t abandon Ukraine.

The Dutch national was one of at least 31 people injured in what local officials called a large-scale Russian drone assault on the southeastern Ukrainian city.

Warning: Images and video in this story are graphic.

When explosions rocked the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday evening, a Dutch man who’d recently left his contract with the Ukrainian military, found himself, now a civilian, sprinting for cover - just seconds before a Russian drone hit the street behind him.

In Monaco, the SBU detained the son of the aviation giant’s former president for allegedly helping embezzle $650M in state assets and laundering them via offshore firms and luxury EU real estate.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), working with the Prosecutor General’s Office and law enforcement agencies in France and Monaco, has detained the son of the former president of the the leading Ukrainian aircraft engine manufacturer, Motor Sich.

Oleksandr Bohuslayev, the son of former Motor Sich president Vyacheslav Bohuslayev, was detained on suspicion of embezzling company assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

A massive Russian drone attack on Zaporizhzhia left dozens of people injured, including a child, and caused widespread damage to residential buildings, schools, and infrastructure.

Russian forces launched a large-scale drone attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia on the evening of May 1, injuring at least 31 people and causing widespread damage, according to regional officials.

The head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration (OVA), Ivan Fedorov, reported at 10:07 p.m. on Telegram that the city was under heavy drone attack and urged residents to take shelter.

The groups were barred after they purchased and sent attack drones to the Ukrainian military, actions that may have contravened charity law according to the FT.

The student unions at University College London (UCL) and Lancaster University (LU) have reportedly suspended the activities of their Ukrainian student societies after raising funds to buy Chinese DJI Mavic drones to support the war effort in Ukraine.

According to a  Financial Times (FT) report on Thursday the student unions took the action because the purchases made last year could have broken the law that bans charities from providing military aid to foreign forces – student unions are registered as charities.

What’s really behind the landmark US-Ukraine minerals deal? Kyiv Post’s Editor-in-Chief Bohdan Nahaylo joins TVP World to break down Ukraine’s leverage, US interests, and what’s next for security aid.

The date is earlier than what some lawmakers suggested earlier, and the first vote is for ratification of the agreement, with subsequent votes only deciding details in an aleady binding deal.

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, will decide whether to ratify the joint US-Ukraine mineral deal penned in Washington in its first vote on May 8, with two additional votes by lawmakers only deciding follow-on details of what would already be a binding agreement.

Lawmakers Oleksiy Goncharenko and Yaroslav Zheleznyak confirmed it on their respective Telegram channels after Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal briefed lawmakers this morning.

As EU prepares new measures against Russia over its war in Ukraine, French Foreign Minister visits Washington to coordinate joint actions to secure lasting peace in the continent.

The top French diplomat on Thursday met with senior US officials and lawmakers in Washington to discuss the importance of maintaining pressure on Russia, including with additional sanctions, as well as the need to support Ukraine with security guarantees, Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent reports.

“I’ve heard President [Donald] Trump, but also other officials from the US, clearly say that they want this peace to be lasting. And of course, this means that there is a security guarantee for Ukraine,” Jean-Noel Barrot told an audience at the Atlantic Council wrapping his first trip to Washington as the French Foreign Minister.

Occupied Crimea was hit by an overnight drone attack, with explosions near military airfields around the Black Sea Fleet base; reports of fires and a temporary bridge closure.

In the early hours of the morning, May 2, Russian-occupied Crimea came under a large-scale drone attack, with explosions reported simultaneously in multiple cities across the peninsula, including Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, Saky, and near Hvardiiske.

According to Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, air defense systems were activated in the areas of Sevastopol Bay, Kacha, and Balaklava.

Ukrainian intelligence agency hacked the SibSeti major provider using a DDoS attack to disable internet access to the cities during Russia’s May holidays.

Cyber specialists from Ukraine’s defense intelligence directorate (HUR) launched a cyberattack against major Russian internet providers ahead of Russia’s May holiday celebrations. They targeted companies such as “SibSeti” which left thousands of users without internet access, an intelligence source told Kyiv Post on condition of anonymity.

Between April 30 and May 2, Russian media outlets and Telegram channels were flooded with complaints from users unable to access internet services. The disruption was caused by powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that overwhelmed and disabled the SibSeti servers in the Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo, and Krasnoyarsk regions of Siberia.

The fund for US-Ukraine investment in critical minerals will grant access to investment projects.

A separate agreement will specify how the Reconstruction Fund under the mineral deal works, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Economy Oleksii Sobolev told reporters on Thursday.

Ukraine’s Agency on Support [of] Public-Private Partnership and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will establish the upcoming agreement.

Once Ukraine’s parliament ratifies the agreement Washington and Kyiv will work separately on the mechanisms under which the Reconstruction Fund will be implemented.

The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, registered a bill to ratify Wednesday’s deal that will establish a joint fund that shares in the investment in, and profits from, the extraction of Ukrainian natural resources, according to its website.

“The Draft Law of Ukraine … has been developed with the aim of fulfilling the domestic procedures required for the entry into force of the Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the United States of America on the Establishment of the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, signed on April 30, 2025, in Washington DC, in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine,” the Explanatory Note to the draft law says. 

No executive order or proclamation enumerating the holiday name changes has been formally issued yet by the White House.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday expressed his intent to rename both May 8 and November 11 “Victory Day” in his latest attempt to alter the country’s nomenclature.

“I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

At the same time a US State Department spokesperson said the US would no longer act as a mediator in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

US Vice President JD Vance has said the war in Ukraine is unlikely to end soon, but added that both Kyiv and Moscow have, for the first time, publicly laid out their peace terms - a shift he called a “big breakthrough.”

Speaking to Fox News, Vance credited the Trump administration with helping to bring both parties to a point where the start of negotiations might be possible.

US intel says Putin now aims to solidify control of occupied areas and boost Russia’s economy, raising concerns he may pause, not end, the war.

Recent U.S. and Western intelligence assessments suggest that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may have shifted his short-term goals in the war against Ukraine. He is now reportedly focusing on consolidating control over occupied territories and saving Russia’s struggling economy.

According to Ukrinform, this was reported by CNN, citing its intelligence sources.

Accession negotiations are divided into six ‘clusters’ with the first being concerned with ‘fundamentals’ including the rule of law, democratic institutions, and public administration reform.

The EU’s enlargement commissioner has confirmed that Brussels will open accession negotiations with both Ukraine and Moldova “simultaneously and as soon as possible,” despite objections from Budapest over Ukraine joining the bloc.

Marta Kos posted on the X platform on Wednesday that Brussels is open to starting ‘Cluster 1’ of the accession talks with both candidates.

It’s clearly more planes than usual – by weight the air supply effort is being led by cargo 747s contracted by the USAF. But it’s less than half the air bridge the Americans built for Ukraine in 2024.

Military freight arrivals at the NATO-Ukraine key air logistics hub Rzeszów Poland have shot up, led by 130-ton cargo capacity US Air Force (USAF) contracted 747 jumbo jets landing more than daily, and beefed up by air cargo planes from a half dozen other air forces.

Kyiv Post review of open-source flight tracking platforms, and aircraft arrival/departured information for the airport at Rzeszów, NATO’s main air logistics hub in eastern Poland, found that military heavy cargo aircraft traffic from April 24 to May 1 had nearly doubled compared to military cargo plane flight volumes typical there in recent months.

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

• The United States and Ukraine published additional information about their April 30 bilateral economic partnership agreement.
• US Special Envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg recently reaffirmed that Ukrainian officials remain committed to resolving the war in Ukraine, despite ongoing Russian refusals to accept US President Donald Trump’s repeated proposals for a general ceasefire in pursuit of lasting peace in Ukraine.
• Russia continues to reject US and European proposals to deploy Western peacekeeping forces to Ukraine and calls for Russia to make territorial concessions in pursuit of a lasting peace in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin’s unyielding negotiating position.
• Russian forces recently advanced in Sumy Oblast and near Lyman, Siversk, Pokrovsk, and Kurakhove.

“Russia has made no effort, has sent no sign that it is ready for the ceasefire or the peace that [the US] aspires to, and that the Europeans and of course the Ukrainians aspire to,” Barrot said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Thursday that the European Union is preparing to hit Russia with a 17th round of sanctions, describing President Vladimir Putin as the “sole obstacle” to peace in Ukraine.

The 27-nation bloc has imposed unprecedented penalties on Russia in response to its invasion, and said this year it would not lift sanctions before Putin’s “unconditional” withdrawal of forces from Ukraine.

Former US Ambassador to Ukraine tells Kyiv Post the departure of the National Security Advisor, with Rubio as interim replacement, suggests no major change in US foreign policy.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a major shakeup in his national security team, tapping Mike Waltz to be his UN Ambassador while Secretary of State Marco Rubio will fill Waltz’s former national security advisor role on an interim basis.

The move came amid reports that Waltz and his deputy at the National Security Council, Alex Wong, would be leaving their posts after they lost the confidence of other administration officials.

While visiting the US, Aleksandar Vučić said the West was taking Kosovo from Serbia, and announced his decision to attend Putin’s parade because he “promised him” he would.

While on a state visit to Washington, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on Thursday he will not back out of plans to visit Moscow on Victory Day, as he had given his word to Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin that he would be there.

“My word matters. I’ve never lied to anyone. No one else has to go, no one else has to suffer. I will go – unless something happens or some threat is directed at Serbia. But my mind is not so easily changed,” Vučić said.