Russia would consider NATO forces protecting Ukrainian airspace as a declaration of war, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday.
“Implementing the provocative idea of Kiev and other idiots to create a no-fly zone over ‘Ukraine’ and allowing NATO countries to down our drones will mean only one thing: NATO’s war with Russia,” the politician wrote on his Telegram channel.
After a slew of Russian drones violated Polish airspace last week, NATO deployed additional fighter jets along its eastern flank. That prompted fresh discussion in Europe about extending protection to western Ukraine and shooting down incoming Russian drones or missiles there.
Since the start of the large-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine has been calling for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone. But Kiev’s Western allies have so far refrained from such a step, fearing a direct military confrontation with Moscow.
Medvedev, who now wields significant power in Russia as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, also threatened retaliation if Russia’s state assets frozen in the European Union were paid out to Ukraine as a part of a reparations loan.
Moscow, he wrote, would pursue the responsible EU states and politicians “in all possible international and national courts — and in some cases, outside of them.”
Prince Harry has denied airing dirty laundry in his book, Spare, and said “my conscience is clear” during a new interview in Ukraine.
The Duke of Sussex’s comments came days after a private tea with King Charles III, which was seen as a positive sign for hopes of reconciliation.
“I don’t believe that I aired my dirty laundry in public,” Harry told The Guardian. “It was a difficult message, but I did it in the best way possible. My conscience is clear.”
Prince Harry speaks with young people who are involved with The Diana Award on September 11, 2025, in London. Prince Harry speaks with young people who are involved with The Diana Award on September 11, 2025, in London. Aaron Chown – Pool/Getty Images
Why It Matters
No confirmation has emerged of what was discussed during Charles and Harry’s tea but the pervasive view among commentators has been that it is important for long-term hopes for peace that no details leak.
And none have, though the Guardian interview featured a defense of Spare‘s incendiary royal bombshells that included a description of Queen Camilla as “dangerous.”
What To Know
Harry spoke out during an interview with The Guardian that was predominantly about his visit to Kyiv to promote the work his Invictus Games Foundation is doing to help soldiers wounded in the war. The trip was a surprise addition to his four-day U.K. visit and the rest of the media were not told in advance for security reasons.
“I know that [speaking out] annoys some people and it goes against the narrative,” Harry said. “The book? It was a series of corrections to stories already out there. One point of view had been put out and it needed to be corrected.”
Guardian journalist Nick Hopkins wrote that “being called stubborn slightly rankles with him.”
“It’s not stubbornness, it is having principles,” Harry said. He repeated a mantra he has outlined before that “you cannot have reconciliation before you have truth.”
However, he must also have known that the royals are not free to speak their truth about a conflict that has now been running seven years.
For example, Prince William‘s perspective has been that Meghan Markle bullied palace staff at the private office the two couples shared at Kensington Palace.
We know that only because of leaks, which Harry has argued are immoral and aspects of his interviews. William has never given his account in his own words.
In Spare, Harry acknowledged that: “More than once a staff member slumped across their desk and wept.
“For all this, every bit of it, Willy blamed one person. Meg. He told me so several times and he got cross when I told him he was out of line.”
What Harry Said About Meghan
Harry described how Meghan told him telling the truth “is the most efficient way to live,” adding: “She said, ‘Just stick to the truth.’ It is the thing I always fall back on. Always.
“And if you think like that, who would be stupid enough to lie? It takes up too much time and effort.”
In March 2021, they told Oprah Winfrey they were married in secret by then Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in their back garden, prior to their May 2018 St. George’s Chapel wedding which had a global TV audience of millions.
The comment prompted Welby to clarify the St. George’s Chapel wedding was indeed the legally binding ceremony and he would have been “committing a serious crime” if he had signed the marriage certificate knowing it was not.
And a former spokesman for Elizabeth, Dickie Arbiter, asked for an apology after he was misquoted in Spare as saying Harry and Meghan could expect “no mercy” after they quit royal life.
The comment had in fact been said by journalist Sir Trevor Phillips as a warning about how conservative Brits might react to the couple’s exit. Arbiter did not get his apology and nor was the passage altered in the book.
Harry’s uncompromising, one sided view of notions like truth, lies and accountability may sound warning sirens about whether reconciliation is possible in the long-term.
Harry and Charles’ Relationship
Whatever risk Harry might have taken with the hard-line position in his Guardian interview, he did also make it clear his relationship with his father is important to him. Over the next year, “the focus really has to be on my dad,” he said.
It is slightly unclear what he means, as their professional lives are entirely separate and they live in different countries.
Hopkins, though, noted: “Harry won’t talk about his father, but he seems to suggest he wants, and needs, to see his father more often.”
It is not clear when his next visit to Britain would be, though he has a high-profile lawsuit against the Daily Mail and its sister titles set to go to trial early next year.
Assuming he does not settle out of court, he will likely have to testify in person in London. Making time to see his father alongside such a high-profile and controversial court appearance might be significantly harder to engineer than his 55-minute visit to Clarence House on Wednesday.
Harry gave his Guardian interview during a visit to Ukraine where he visibly welled up talking about the very real conflict with Russia and the very literal injuries inflicted on thousands of soldiers who have returned from the front lines.
He hopes his Invictus Games initiative will show those veterans a path to rehabilitation through sport, though some of his advice on the ground may have some relevance closer to home too.
“You will feel lost at times, like you lack purpose,” he said during a panel discussion at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, “but however dark those days are, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
“You just need to look for it, because there will always be someone—a mother, father, sibling, friend, or comrade—there to pick you up.”
“Don’t stay silent,” he said. “Silence will hold you in the dark. Open up to your friends and family, because in doing so you give them permission to do the same.”
However, opening up for Harry, Charles and William may mean reopening old wounds.
Do you have a question about Charles and Camilla, William and Princess Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We’d love to hear from you.
President Trump signaled a new position on Russia’s war with Ukraine. He said the U.S. will agree to additional sanctions on Moscow, but only when NATO allies stop buying Russian oil. Willie James Inman has more details.
Romania became the latest NATO member state to report a drone incursion into its airspace Saturday, while Poland scrambled aircraft in response to fresh Russian drone strikes just over the border in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia was deliberately expanding its drone operations and that the West needed to respond with tougher sanctions and closer defense cooperation.
In Washington, President Trump said he was ready to impose major sanctions on Russia — just as soon as all NATO nations did the same thing and stopped buying Russian oil.
Romania’s defense ministry said Saturday that the country’s airspace had been breached by a drone during a Russian attack on infrastructure in neighboring Ukraine.
The country scrambled two F-16 fighter jets late on Saturday to monitor the situation following the strikes, said a defense ministry statement.
The jets “detected a drone in national airspace” and tracked it until “it disappeared from the radar” near the Romanian village of Chilia Veche, it added.
Romanian President Nicusor Dan reviews a military honour guard with the German president during an official welcoming ceremony in the garden of the presidential Bellevue Palace in Berlin on July 18, 2025.
TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images
Also Saturday, Poland said it and its NATO allies had deployed helicopters and aircraft as Russian drones struck Ukraine not far from its border.
Because of the drone threat, “Polish and allied aircraft are operating in our airspace, and ground-based air defense and radar reconnaissance systems have reached their highest level of alert,” the country’s military command posted in a statement on X.
Later Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that the high alert had been lifted, while cautioning: “We remain vigilant.”
Poland and its fellow NATO countries have been on their guard since Warsaw said nearly 20 Russian drones entered its airspace overnight Tuesday to Wednesday.
While Russia denies targeting Poland, several European countries including France, Germany and Sweden have stepped up their support for defending Polish airspace in response.
“Today, Romania scrambled combat aircraft because of a Russian drone in its airspace,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Also today, Poland responded militarily to the threat of Russian attack drones,” which had also been active in different regions of Ukraine all day, he added.
The Russian military knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air,” said Zelenskyy.
The latest drone incursions were “an obvious expansion of the war by Russia”, he added.
What was required in response were fresh sanctions against Russia and a collective defense system, Zelenskyy argued.
“Do not wait for dozens of ‘shaheds’ and ballistic missiles before finally making decisions,” he warned, referring to the Iranian-designed Shahed drones Russia is using.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday expressed concern at the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace earlier in the week.
If it turned out to have been deliberate, “then obviously it will be … highly escalatory,” he told reporters in Washington.
Mr. Trump’s suggestion on Thursday that the incident might have happened by “mistake”, was quickly dismissed by Tusk.
President Trump said he believes the more than three-year war in Ukraine would end if all NATO countries stopped buying oil from Russia and placed tariffs on China for its purchases of Russian petroleum.
Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday a letter purportedly sent to NATO in which he said he is “ready to do major Sanctions on Russia” on the condition that all NATO countries stop buying Russian oil. The president said the military alliance’s commitment to winning the war in Ukraine “has been far less than 100%” and the purchase of Russian oil by some members is “shocking.”
“It greatly weakens your negotiation position, and bargaining power, over Russia,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Since 2023, NATO member Turkey has been the third largest buyer of Russian oil, after China and India, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Other members of the 32-state alliance involved in purchasing Russian oil include Hungary and Slovakia.
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump appeared to play down the significance of the incident, saying the incursion may not have been deliberate
“It could have been a mistake,” he told journalists late Thursday. A day earlier, Mr. Trump issued a brief reaction on his Truth Social platform: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised to end the war quickly. Some lawmakers in Congress are trying to persuade Mr. Trump to support a bill that toughens sanctions, after the president hosted Putin in Alaska for talks that failed to deliver on progress toward peace.
The president in his post said a NATO ban on Russian oil plus tariffs on China would “also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR.”
Mr. Trump said NATO members should impose 50% to 100% tariffs on China and withdraw them if the war that was launched with Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine ends.
“China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia,” he posted, and powerful tariffs “will break that grip.”
The U.S. president has already placed an additional 25% import tax on goods from India, which he has said is to punish it for buying Russian energy products.
In his post, Mr. Trump said responsibility for the war fell on his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. As in past statements on the issue, he did not include in that list Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the invasion.
Mr. Trump’s post builds on a call Friday with finance ministers from the Group of Seven, a forum of industrialized democracies. During the call, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on their counterparts to have a “unified front” to cut off “the revenues funding Putin’s war machine,” according to Greer’s office.
After several months of fierce fighting, Ukraine says it has stopped a Russian advance in north-east Ukraine.
“As of today, we can state that the Russian offensive operation in (the Sumy region) has been completely foiled by our forces,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyi wrote in a post on Telegram following a consultation with the army leadership, including army commander-in-chief Olexander Syrskyi.
The fighting in the border areas was continuing, but the Russian group was no longer in a position to attack, Zelensky asserted.
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again declared that the Russian army should conquer a buffer zone of around 10 kilometres in the Ukrainian border region of Sumy.
This was intended to prevent Ukrainian advances, including into the western Russian region of Kursk, as was the case last year.
According to Ukrainian military observers, Russian troops continue to control more than 200 square kilometres in the Sumy region.
Ukraine has been defending itself against a Russian invasion for more than three and a half years with Western help.
Including the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory is now under Russian control.
The White House unleashed on The Washington Post for its reporting on the stabbing murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska by a career criminal on a train in North Carolina in August.
“White House: The career criminal who murdered Iryna Zarutska should’ve been locked up. Murderer’s mother: My son should’ve been locked up. Washington Post citing ‘experts’: Actually, locking up violent criminals is draconian!” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X on Wednesday.
Leavitt was reacting to a Washington Post article titled, “Trump blames Democrats for Charlotte stabbing. Records complicate the story,” which detailed the White House’s position that left-wing cities have created violent trends via soft-on-crime policies such as no-cash bail. The article focused on the murder of Zarutska and the suspect allegedly behind the tragedy, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr.
Brown had a lengthy arrest record ahead of Zarutska’s death, racking up 14 arrests over the last decade, as well as convictions including larceny and breaking and entering in 2013, and a 2015 conviction for robbery with a dangerous weapon, which landed him behind bars for six years, Fox Digital previously reported.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks about the stabbing death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a North Carolina train during a briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., Sept. 9, 2025.(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
More recent charges included communicating threats and misuse of the 911 system earlier this year. Brown, however, was not under state supervision at the time of Zarutska’s killing.
Brown’s own mother, whom the Washington Post noted in its Wednesday report, told local media that her son should have been detained at the time of the killing, and lamented the court system released him despite previous arrests and mental health concerns. The White House provided its own statement to the outlet arguing violent criminals should be detained and not out on the streets, which the Washington Post included.
“This is not a ‘complicated issue,’ like many Democrats and left-wing media outlets have tried to claim; it is very simple: violent criminals belong behind bars, not sitting behind innocent bystanders on public transportation,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Washington Post for the story in question.
The White House took issue with the outlet, noting the mother’s concern over her son’s release, and Jackson’s statement, before citing experts who reported to the outlet that “permanently confining people who are mentally ill for minor offenses is a ‘draconian’ and inhumane response.”
“The Trump Administration will not let it go unnoticed that the failing left-wing media and out-of-touch, privileged reporters continue to bend over backwards to defend career criminals instead of the innocent victims that are murdered by these monsters,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox Digital of the media report. “Enough is enough: the American people deserve better and that begins by acknowledging the truth about how soft-on-crime policies fuel this unacceptable violence.”
Ukrainian Iryna Zarutska came to the U.S. to escape war but was stabbed to death in Charlotte on Friday. (Evgeniya Rush/GoFundMe)
Fox News Digital reached out to The Washington Post for comment on the White House’s response.
Brown’s mom, who did not identify herself, told local outlet WSOC-TV in August that her son had long struggled with mental illness, noting that he “started saying weird things” after his release from prison for the 2015 robbery conviction.
“My heart goes out to the victim’s family. What he did was atrocious. It was horrible. It was wrong,” she told outlet WSOC-TV.
Ahead of the murder, Brown was charged by police for misusing the 911 system in January, when he claimed to operators that he was being controlled by a microchip, the New York Post reported. He was released from jail on cashless bail and provided a “written promise” to appear in court at a later date.
There were concerns over his mental health, however, with a prosecutor questioning if Brown could proceed in the court case before a judge ordered a forensic evaluation, according to WSOC-TV. Brown was not detained despite the concerns.
Iryna Zarutska curls up in fear as a man looms over her during a disturbing attack on a Charlotte, N.C. light rail train.(NewsNation via Charlotte Area Transit System)
His mother told the local outlet that the court should not have allowed him to be among the community, citing his mental state and previous arrests, while adding that “the system failed him.”
The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it federally charged Brown with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Sept. 9, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Leavitt, during a White House press briefing on Tuesday, railed against media outlets for their slow response in covering the fatal stabbing after it unfolded on Aug. 22.
“This is madness. This monster should have been locked up, and Iryna should still be alive, but Democrat politicians, liberal judges, and weak prosecutors would rather virtue signal than lock up criminals and protect their communities,” Leavitt said on Tuesday. “Perhaps most shamefully of all, the majority of the media, many outlets in this room, decided that her murder was not worth reporting on originally because it does not fit a preferred narrative.”
Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and Alexander Hall contributed to this report.
Next stop: Kyiv. After his visit to London, during which he saw father King Charles III for the first time in nearly 19 months, Prince Harry headed straight to the Ukraine for a previously unannounced trip. The Guardian reported that the Duke of Sussex traveled to the Ukrainian capital city for philanthropic reason: He and several members of his Invictus Games foundation met with servicemen and women wounded since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Harry co-founded the Invictus Games in 2014 with the hope of supporting war veterans and wounded soldiers through community and sport. Three years later, the Ukrainian team competed in the Invictus Games for the first time. Harry pledged in an interview with the Guardian to do “everything possible” to help Ukrainians affected by the fighting.
“We can continue to humanize the people involved in this war and what they are going through,” he continued of his goals. “We have to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds. I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it’s easy to become desensitized to what has been going on.” One of his objectives, he said, is to provide assistance to all regions of the country for the re-education of soldiers, a plan he will discuss with Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and veterans. He also plans to visit the National Museum of the History of Ukraine During the Second World War on the trip.
Last April, Harry made surprise visit to the city of Lviv with a delegation from his foundation, during which he visited the Superhumans Trauma Center, which treats soldiers and civilians affected by the war. He had already met the facility’s director, Olga Rudnieva, in the United States. He met with Rudnieva on his first visit, and she invited him for this second trip. “I bumped into Olga in New York,” he said. “It was a chance meeting and I asked her what I could do to help. She said, ‘the biggest impact you have is coming to Kyiv.’ I had to check with my wife and the British government to make sure it was OK. Then the official invitation came.”
“In Lviv, you don’t see much of the war. It is so far west. This is the first time we will see the real destruction of the war.”
The Duke of Sussex has fond memories of the Ukrainian team’s participation in the Invictus Games: “It was remarkable. Every one of the participants had a journey to get to those games, but nobody from any of the other competing nations was going back to war. That is why the Ukrainians stood out. Everyone felt an immense connection to them. Some of the competitors were being pulled off the battlefield and were going back to the battlefield. It means so much to us, because it means so much to them.”
Ukraine’s Minister of Veterans Affairs, Natalia Kalmykova, praised Prince Harry and Invictus’s commitment to the veterans: “It’s thanks to our relationship with the Invictus Games Foundation that we established, and continue to develop, the role of sports in recovery in Ukraine and why it’s included in the veteran policy strategy.”
Warsaw — Poland’s most senior officials on Friday dismissed President Trump’s suggestion that a major Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace could have been a mistake by Vladimir Putin’s military.
“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a message posted on social media.
Polish authorities said they had recovered parts of 17 Russian-made drones, which fell without causing any injuries or major damage in the east of the country on Wednesday.
Polish and allied NATO fighter jets from Holland were scrambled to intercept the drones — a first such response to aerial Russian military incursions into NATO airspace since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stands in front of Polish Air Force F-16 fighter jets as he holds a news conference regarding the threat posed by Russian drones in Polish airspace, at the 32nd Tactical Air Base in Lask, southwest of Lodz, Poland, Sept. 11, 2025.
Agencja Wyborcza.pl/Tomasz Stanczak via REUTERS
Poland’s relatively new, conservative President Karol Nawrocki, in a social media post on Thursday, called the Russian drone incursion “nothing more than an attempt to test our capabilities and response. It was an attempt to test the mechanisms of action within NATO and our ability to respond.”
Other European capitals and the European Union also labelled the raid a Russian test of the NATO alliance’s resolve in the face of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, but Mr. Trump suggested otherwise.
“It could have been a mistake,” he told journalists late Thursday when asked about the incident. A day earlier, Mr. Trump issued a brief reaction to the incident, saying on his Truth Social platform: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”
The White House did not offer any clarification of Mr. Trump’s remarks.
Previously, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said in a social media post that the U.S. stood “by our NATO Allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
A map graphic shows in dark blue the European nations which, along with the United States and Canada, are members of the transatlantic NATO defense alliance.
brichuas/Getty Images
Poland’s Deputy Minister of Defense Cezary Tomczyk also rejected Mr. Trump’s suggestion on Thursday that the drone incursion could have been inadvertent.
“I think this is a message that should reach President Trump today: there’s no question of a mistake – this was a deliberate Russian attack,” he told the Polsat News television network.
“On the night that 19 Russian drones crossed into Poland, 400 (drones) plus 40 missiles crossed into Ukraine,” added Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in a video message shared on social media, ahead of a visit to Ukraine’s capital. “These were not mistakes.”
Poland has requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the Russian drone incursion, which is set to take place Friday afternoon.
Europe says it’s investing $7 billion into Ukraine’s increasingly famed drone industry.
It comes after Ukraine’s defense minister estimated that Kyiv needs $6 billion to cover drone costs.
It’s paid by interest on frozen Russian assets, so it’s not clear if all $7 billion is now available.
Europe is poised to inject $7 billion into Ukraine’s drone industry, hoping to supercharge mass production for the country’s increasingly renowned low-cost weapons.
The European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday that the European Union would “frontload 6 billion euros,” or roughly $7 billion, for Ukrainian drones.
“Ukraine has the ingenuity. What it needs now is scale,” von der Leyen said in her State of the European Union address.
The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far.
It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles.
While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities.
Importantly, they also allow Kyiv’s troops to harass and halt Russian ground assaults from afar, meaning additional or improved drones could further stifle Moscow’s ability to advance or attrit Ukrainian forces.
The local drone industry is now seen as a globally leading force, driven by a wide range of domestic manufacturers and individual military units. Many of these firms and troops are often strapped for cash, partially relying on volunteer donations and crowdfunding to update their drones or stay afloat.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated in June that his country had the capacity to make 8 million drones a year, but lacked the funding to do so.
In her speech, von der Leyen said that Ukrainian drones were responsible for at least 23% of Russian equipment losses. Ukrainian officials have said that at least 70% of all reported hits in the war were caused by drones.
She also spoke of Ukraine’s need to fight Russia’s growing Shahed waves, indicating that the money could be used to fund the production of interceptor drones.
“So we can use our industrial strength to support Ukraine to counter this drone warfare,” von der Leyen said.
Per von der Leyen, the funding will come from interest on frozen Russian assets.
However, it’s not immediately clear how much of the $7 billion is now ready to be used in Ukraine. Europe estimates that frozen Russian assets can, at most, generate interest of roughly $3.5 billion a year.
Nor has the European Commission publicly detailed plans on how the money will be disbursed or monitored.
Spokespersons for the European Commission did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Von der Leyen said that since 2022, Europe has contributed close to $200 billion in financial and military aid to Ukraine.
While drones are often associated with the first-person-view, or FPV, propeller platforms used to fly into enemy targets with explosives, Ukraine has also been experimenting with a range of uncrewed aerial, naval, and ground systems in combat.
More recently, it’s been codifying more ground-based robots to relieve human soldiers from dangerous frontline combat tasks.
Some of Kyiv’s long-range munitions are also drones, such as the winged platforms it’s been using to strike Russia’s production facilities hundreds of miles from the border.
At least three Russian drones were shot down by Nato and Polish aircraft in Poland’s airspace during overnight attacks on Ukraine, the Polish prime minister has said.
Donald Tusk told MPs that Poland had recorded 19 drone incursions, with some flying deep enough to temporarily close four airports, including Warsaw’s main hub Chopin.
Jets were scrambled in response to what Tusk described as a “provocation”.
The incident marks the first time Russian drones have been shot down over the territory of a Nato member since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia declined to comment, while Ukraine’s foreign minister said the incident showed “Putin continues to escalate, expands the war”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow: “We wouldn’t like to comment on this. This is not for us to do so. It’s the prerogative of the Defence Ministry [to answer].”
Russia’s temporary charge d’affaires in Poland said Warsaw had not provided evidence that the drones were of Russian origin.
Polish authorities have no information suggesting anyone was injured or died “as a result of the Russian action”, Tusk told Poland’s Parliament.
“The fact that these drones, which posed a security threat, were shot down changes the political situation,” he said.
“I have no reason to claim we’re on the brink of war, but a line has been crossed, and it’s incomparably more dangerous than before. This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two”.
Tusk said three – or perhaps four – drones were shot down overnight.
Separately, an interior ministry spokeswoman said authorities found seven drones and the remains of an unidentified object in sites across the country.
Karolina Galecka told a news conference that five of the drones and the remains of the unidentified object were found in different locations in Lublin province in eastern Poland, bordering Belarus and Ukraine.
Two of the drones were discovered in central and northern Poland, much further from the borders, she said.
One was discovered in a field in Mniszków, in Łódź province in central Poland, about 250 km (155 miles) from the Belarusian border. Another was discovered near the city of Elbląg in northern Poland.
[BBC]
Tusk, who convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday morning, has asked to invoke article 4 of the Nato treaty, which formally starts urgent talks between members of the alliance.
Poland is a member state of Nato – which ties the US and many European nations together on collective defence.
Both Tusk and Polish President Karol Nawrocki have said they are in “regular contact” with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, who praised a “very successful reaction” by the alliance.
“The security of our homeland is our highest priority and requires close cooperation,” President Nawrocki said on X.
Rutte added that the situation is being investigated, as he condemned Russia’s “reckless behaviour”, irrespective of whether it was deliberate.
Belarus, a close Russian ally, claimed the drones entered Polish airspace accidentally after their navigation systems were jammed.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says Poland is at its closest to open conflict than at any time since World War Two. [EPA/Shutterstock]
Overnight, the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said the drones were tracked by radar by both Polish and Nato aircraft stationed in the country.
The military said: “As a result of the attack by the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory, there was an unprecedented violation of Polish airspace by drone-type objects.
“Searches and efforts to locate the potential crash sites of these objects are ongoing.”
Although Poland’s military operation has ended, it urged people to stay at home, naming Podlaskie, Mazowieckie, and Lublin regions as most at risk.
“With the safety of citizens in mind, we urge that in the event of observing an unknown object or its debris, do not approach, touch, or move it,” the military wrote on X.
“Such elements may pose a threat and contain hazardous materials. They must be thoroughly inspected by the appropriate services.”
The Polish military also thanked Nato’s Air Command and the Netherlands for deploying F35 fighter jets.
Polish military’s Gen Wieslaw Kukula attends an emergency meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk [Reuters]
Flight operations were suspended for hours at Warsaw’s Chopin and Modlin airports, as well as at Rzeszów–Jasionka and Lublin.
A number of flights which had been due to land at Chopin airport were diverted to Gdansk, Katowice, Wroclaw, Poznan and Copenhagen.
After airspace over the the capital was re-opened, Chopin airport said disruptions and delays may last throughout the day and warned passengers to expect delays.
Passengers check their delayed flights on monitors at the international airport in Warsaw [AFP via Getty Images]
The Russian drones that entered Poland were part of the latest major aerial attack on Ukraine.
In total, Ukraine’s air force reported more than 400 drones and 42 cruise missiles were launched just before midnight and the bombardment lasted throughout the night.
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the latest attack was “an extremely dangerous precedent for Europe”.
Writing on Telegram, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Putin is “testing the West”.
“The longer he faces no strength in response, the more aggressive he gets.
“A weak response now will provoke Russia even more — and then Russian missiles and drones will fly even further into Europe.”
Poland said early Wednesday that multiple Russian drones entered and were shot down over its territory with help from NATO allies, describing the incident as an “act of aggression” carried out during a wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine.Several European leaders said they believed Russia was intentionally escalating the war, and NATO was discussing the incident in a meeting. It came three days after Russia’s largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began, an attack that for the first time hit a key government building in Kyiv.“Russia’s war is escalating, not ending,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. “Last night in Poland we saw the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began, and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental.”Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media that Polish airspace was violated by multiple Russian drones. “Those drones that posed a direct threat were shot down,” Tusk said.Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X that more than 10 objects crossed into Polish air space, but he did not specify an exact number. He thanked NATO Air Command and The Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force for supporting the action with F-35 fighter jets.Polish airspace has been violated multiple times since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but there has been nothing on this scale either in Poland or in any other Western nation along the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union.Drones rattle Baltic NATO membersLeaders in the strategically located Baltic states of Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia — the NATO members that are most nervous about Russian aggression — expressed deep concerns.“Russia is deliberately expanding its aggression, posing an ever-growing threat to Europe,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda wrote on X. Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said that the overnight attacks on Ukraine and violations of Polish airspace were “yet another stark reminder that Russia is not just a threat to Ukraine, but to all of Europe and NATO.”Bernard Blaszczuk, mayor of the village of Wyryki in Lublin region, told TVP Info that a house was hit by “either a missile or a drone, we don’t know yet.” He said people were inside the building but nobody was hurt.The Polish armed forces said Wednesday morning that a search for possible crash sites is ongoing and urged people not to approach, touch or move any objects they see, warning that they may pose a threat and could contain hazardous material.Warsaw’s Chopin Airport suspended flights for several hours, citing the closure of airspace due to military operations.Russian objects have entered Polish airspace beforePoland has complained about Russian objects entering its airspace during attacks on Ukraine before.In August, Poland’s defense minister said that a flying object that crashed and exploded in a cornfield in eastern Poland was identified as a Russian drone, and called it a provocation by Russia.In March, Poland scrambled jets after a Russian missile briefly passed through Polish air space on its way to a target in western Ukraine, and in 2022, a missile that was likely fired by Ukraine to intercept a Russian attack landed in Poland, killing two people.NATO members vow supportNATO said its air defenses supported Poland, and chief spokesperson Allison Hart said the military organization’s 32 national envoys will discuss the matter at a pre-planned meeting.Col. Martin O’Donnell, NATO’s Supreme Allied Powers Europe, said: “This is the first time NATO planes have engaged potential threats in Allied airspace.”Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof confirmed in a message on X that Dutch F-35 fighter jets stationed in Poland under NATO provided support to the Polish air force overnight.“Let me be clear: the violation of Polish airspace last night by Russian drones is unacceptable. It is further proof that the Russian war of aggression poses a threat to European security,” Schoof said in the Dutch language message on X.German Patriot defense systems in Poland were also placed “on alert,” and an Italian airborne early warning plane and an aerial refueler from NATO’s Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport aircraft fleet were launched, O’Donnell said.NATO, he said, “is committed to defending every kilometer of NATO territory, including our airspace.”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message on Telegram that the deployment of European aircraft to intercept the drones was an “important precedent.”Russia must know the response to escalation “will be a clear and strong reaction from all partners,” Zelenskyy said.Russian attacks hit central and western UkraineUkraine’s Air Force says Russia fired 415 strike and decoy drones, as well as 42 cruise missiles and one ballistic missiles overnight.Ukrainian air defenses intercepted or jammed 386 drones and 27 cruise missiles, according to the report.“At least eight enemy UAVs crossed Ukraine’s state border in the direction of the Republic of Poland,” the Air Force message said.Russian drones injured three people in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, its head Serhii Tiurin wrote on Telegram early Wednesday morning. He said a sewing factory was destroyed, a gas station and vehicles were damaged, and windows in several houses were blown out.One person was killed and one injured in Zhytomyr region overnight, regional administration head Vitalii Bunechko wrote on Telegram, while homes and businesses suffered damage.In Vinnytsia region, Russian drones damaged “civilian and industrial infrastructure,” according to regional head Natalia Zabolotna. Nearly 30 residential buildings were damaged and one person was injured.In Cherkasy region, several houses and a power grid were damaged in a Russian attack. In Zolotonosha district, a shock wave destroyed a barn killing two cows, regional head Ihor Taburets wrote on Telegram.The Russian Defense Ministry said in its morning report on Wednesday that it had destroyed 122 Ukrainian drones over various Russian regions overnight, including over the illegally annexed Crimea and areas of the Black Sea.___Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. AP writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
WARSAW, Poland —
Poland said early Wednesday that multiple Russian drones entered and were shot down over its territory with help from NATO allies, describing the incident as an “act of aggression” carried out during a wave of Russian strikes on Ukraine.
Several European leaders said they believed Russia was intentionally escalating the war, and NATO was discussing the incident in a meeting. It came three days after Russia’s largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began, an attack that for the first time hit a key government building in Kyiv.
“Russia’s war is escalating, not ending,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. “Last night in Poland we saw the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began, and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media that Polish airspace was violated by multiple Russian drones. “Those drones that posed a direct threat were shot down,” Tusk said.
Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X that more than 10 objects crossed into Polish air space, but he did not specify an exact number. He thanked NATO Air Command and The Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force for supporting the action with F-35 fighter jets.
Polish airspace has been violated multiple times since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but there has been nothing on this scale either in Poland or in any other Western nation along the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union.
Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland via AP
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk holds an extraordinary government meeting at the chancellery, with military and emergency services officials, following violations of Polish airspace during a Russian attack, in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025.
Drones rattle Baltic NATO members
Leaders in the strategically located Baltic states of Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia — the NATO members that are most nervous about Russian aggression — expressed deep concerns.
“Russia is deliberately expanding its aggression, posing an ever-growing threat to Europe,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda wrote on X. Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said that the overnight attacks on Ukraine and violations of Polish airspace were “yet another stark reminder that Russia is not just a threat to Ukraine, but to all of Europe and NATO.”
Bernard Blaszczuk, mayor of the village of Wyryki in Lublin region, told TVP Info that a house was hit by “either a missile or a drone, we don’t know yet.” He said people were inside the building but nobody was hurt.
The Polish armed forces said Wednesday morning that a search for possible crash sites is ongoing and urged people not to approach, touch or move any objects they see, warning that they may pose a threat and could contain hazardous material.
Warsaw’s Chopin Airport suspended flights for several hours, citing the closure of airspace due to military operations.
Russian objects have entered Polish airspace before
Poland has complained about Russian objects entering its airspace during attacks on Ukraine before.
In August, Poland’s defense minister said that a flying object that crashed and exploded in a cornfield in eastern Poland was identified as a Russian drone, and called it a provocation by Russia.
In March, Poland scrambled jets after a Russian missile briefly passed through Polish air space on its way to a target in western Ukraine, and in 2022, a missile that was likely fired by Ukraine to intercept a Russian attack landed in Poland, killing two people.
NATO members vow support
NATO said its air defenses supported Poland, and chief spokesperson Allison Hart said the military organization’s 32 national envoys will discuss the matter at a pre-planned meeting.
Col. Martin O’Donnell, NATO’s Supreme Allied Powers Europe, said: “This is the first time NATO planes have engaged potential threats in Allied airspace.”
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof confirmed in a message on X that Dutch F-35 fighter jets stationed in Poland under NATO provided support to the Polish air force overnight.
“Let me be clear: the violation of Polish airspace last night by Russian drones is unacceptable. It is further proof that the Russian war of aggression poses a threat to European security,” Schoof said in the Dutch language message on X.
German Patriot defense systems in Poland were also placed “on alert,” and an Italian airborne early warning plane and an aerial refueler from NATO’s Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport aircraft fleet were launched, O’Donnell said.
NATO, he said, “is committed to defending every kilometer of NATO territory, including our airspace.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message on Telegram that the deployment of European aircraft to intercept the drones was an “important precedent.”
Russia must know the response to escalation “will be a clear and strong reaction from all partners,” Zelenskyy said.
Russian attacks hit central and western Ukraine
Ukraine’s Air Force says Russia fired 415 strike and decoy drones, as well as 42 cruise missiles and one ballistic missiles overnight.
Ukrainian air defenses intercepted or jammed 386 drones and 27 cruise missiles, according to the report.
“At least eight enemy UAVs crossed Ukraine’s state border in the direction of the Republic of Poland,” the Air Force message said.
Russian drones injured three people in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, its head Serhii Tiurin wrote on Telegram early Wednesday morning. He said a sewing factory was destroyed, a gas station and vehicles were damaged, and windows in several houses were blown out.
One person was killed and one injured in Zhytomyr region overnight, regional administration head Vitalii Bunechko wrote on Telegram, while homes and businesses suffered damage.
In Vinnytsia region, Russian drones damaged “civilian and industrial infrastructure,” according to regional head Natalia Zabolotna. Nearly 30 residential buildings were damaged and one person was injured.
In Cherkasy region, several houses and a power grid were damaged in a Russian attack. In Zolotonosha district, a shock wave destroyed a barn killing two cows, regional head Ihor Taburets wrote on Telegram.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in its morning report on Wednesday that it had destroyed 122 Ukrainian drones over various Russian regions overnight, including over the illegally annexed Crimea and areas of the Black Sea.
___
Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. AP writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
Poland said Wednesday it had downed drones that entered its airspace during Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a post on X Wednesday that, “Last night the Polish airspace was violated by a huge number of Russian drones. Those drones that posed a direct threat were shot down. I am in constant communication with the Secretary General of NATO and our allies.”
Poland’s military said Wednesday it had scrambled aircraft alongside allies to shoot down “hostile objects” violating its airspace, a first for a NATO country during the war.
Apparent Russian drones and missiles have entered the airspace of NATO members — including Poland — several times during Russia’s three-and-a-half-year war, but no NATO country has ever tried to shoot them down.
A cornerstone of the Western military alliance is the principle that an attack on any member is deemed an attack on all.
A NATO source told Reuters the alliance isn’t treating the drone incursion into Polish territory as an attack and said early signs pointed to an incursion of six to ten Russian drones that was on purpose. “It was the first time NATO aircraft have engaged potential threats in allied airspace,” the source said.
The military also said on X that, “As a result of attack by the Russian Federation on Ukrainian territory, there was an unprecedented violation of Polish airspace by drone-type objects. This is an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our citizens.”
It said efforts were “underway to search for and locate the possible crash sites of these objects” and “the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces is monitoring the current situation, and Polish and allied forces and assets remain fully prepared for further actions.”
Polish police said officers discovered a damaged drone in the eastern Polish village of Czosnowka, according to Reuters.
Hours later, Poland’s military said on X that the operations had concluded but the search for downed drones was continuing. “We urge that in the event of observing an unknown object or its debris, do not approach, touch, or move it. Such elements may pose a threat and contain hazardous materials. They must be thoroughly inspected by the appropriate services,” the military cautioned.
The Polish government announced it would hold an “extraordinary” meeting Wednesday morning.
Polish State Fire Service Commander Wojciech Kruczek and General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, gather on Sept. 10, 2025 at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in Warsaw for an extraordinary government meeting, following violations of Polish airspace during a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Kacper Pempel / REUTERS
The incursion came as Russia unleashed a barrage of strikes across Ukraine, including in the western city of Lviv, around 50 miles from the Polish border.
Ukrainian air defenses fire at Russian drones above Kyiv during massive drone and missile strikes on Ukraine on Sept. 10, 2025
SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP via Getty Images
Warnings of further Russian aggression
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that eight Russian drones were “aimed toward” Poland in an overnight barrage that forced Warsaw to scramble air defenses. “It was not just one Shahed that could be called an accident, but at least eight strike drones aimed toward Poland,” Zelensky said, referring to Iranian-designed drones deployed by Moscow, adding that the incident represented “An extremely dangerous precedent for Europe.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, warned on X that Russian President Vladimir Putin “just keeps escalating, expanding his war, and testing the West. The longer he faces no strength in response, the more aggressive he gets. A weak response now will provoke Russia even more — and then Russian missiles and drones will fly even further into Europe.”
Poland’s newly-elected nationalist President Karol Nawrocki issued a warning along the same lines Tuesday, saying at a news conference in Helsinki that, “We do not trust Vladimir Putin’s good intentions. We believe that Vladimir Putin is ready to also invade other countries.”
European Union chief Ursula said Moscow had carried out a “reckless and unprecedented” violation of Polish airspace.
And the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, posted on X Wednesday that “we saw the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began, and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental. The EU stands in full solidarity with Poland. Russia’s war is escalating, not ending.”
NATO-member Poland, a major supporter of Ukraine, hosts over a million Ukrainian refugees and is a key transit point for Western humanitarian and military aid to the war-torn country.
Last month, Warsaw said a Russian military drone flew into its airspace and exploded in farmland in eastern Poland and depicted the incident as a “provocation.” In 2023, Poland said a Russian missile had crossed into its airspace to strike Ukraine. And in November 2022, two civilians were killed when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile fell on a village near the border.
DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine’s last strongholds is thick with dread and the future for civilians who remain grows ever more uncertain.
In Kostiantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, there is no steady supply of power, water or gas. Shelling intensifies, drones fill the skies and the city has become unbearable, driving out the last remaining civilians.
Kramatorsk, by contrast, still shows signs of life. Just 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the north, the prewar population of 147,000 has thinned, but restaurants and cafes remain open. The streets are mostly intact. Though the city has endured multiple strikes and is now dominated by the military, daily routines persist in ways that are no longer possible in nearby towns.
Once the industrial heart of Ukraine, Donetsk is being steadily reduced to rubble. Many residents fear its cities may never be rebuilt and, if the war drags on, Russia eventually will swallow what is left.
“(Donetsk) region has been trampled, torn apart, turned into dust,” said Natalia Ivanova, a woman in her 70s who fled Kostiantynivka in early September after a missile struck near her home. Russian President Vladimir Putin “will go all the way … I’m sure of it. I have no doubt more cities will be destroyed.”
Despair and destruction
Kostiantynivka now sits on a shrinking patch of Ukrainian-held territory, wedged just west of Russian-occupied Bakhmut and nearly encircled on three sides by Moscow’s forces.
“They was always shooting,” Ivanova said. “You’d be standing there … and all you’d hear was the whistle of shells.”
She had two apartments. One was destroyed and the other one damaged. For months, she watched buildings disappear in an instant, while swarms of buzzing drones “like beetles” filled the sky, she said.
“I never thought I’d leave,” she added. “I was a stolid soldier, holding on. I’m a pensioner and it (the home) was my comfort zone.”
For years now, Ivanova had watched the region’s cities fall: Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, and others. But the war, she said, still felt far away, even as it closed in on her doorstep.
“I felt for those people,” she said. “But it wasn’t enough to make me leave.”
A blast near her building finally forced her out. The explosion bent her windows so badly she couldn’t shut them before fleeing. Her apartment remained wide open. She left her whole life behind in Kostiantynivka, the city where she was born.
“Please, stop it,” she pleaded, directing her appeal to world leaders as she sat in an evacuation hub shortly after fleeing. “It’s the poorest people who suffer the most. This war is senseless and stupid. We’re dying like animals — by the dozens.”
Living through it together
Olena Voronkova decided to leave Kostiantynivka earlier, in May, when she could no longer run her two businesses: a beauty salon and a cafe.
She and her family relocated to nearby Kramatorsk, which is so close yet, in many ways, far away, as she is no longer able to enter her hometown. It wasn’t the first loss she had suffered since the war began. In 2023, a rocket strike from a multiple-launch system severely damaged their house.
The move to Kramatorsk wasn’t by choice, she added, but “because the circumstances left us no other option.”
First came the mandatory evacuation orders. Then a curfew so strict they could only move around the city for four hours a day. Then came the floods of remote-controlled drones.
“We’re used to life in Donetsk region. We feel good here. Kramatorsk is familiar. A lot of people from our city moved here — even local municipal workers,” Voronkova said.
Not long after arriving in Kramatorsk, she opened a cafe that is nearly identical to the one she left behind. She said the space just happened to look similar. It has high white walls and ornate mirrors she brought from her beauty salon, which is now in the combat zone.
The cafe has since become a refuge for others who also fled Kostiantynivka.
“At first there was hope that maybe some homes would survive — that people might go back,” she said. “Now we see it’s unlikely anyone has anything left. The city is turning into another Bakhmut, Toretsk or Avdiivka. Everything is being destroyed.”
She described the mood as “heavy” because “people are losing hope” and it felt easier in Kramatorsk because everyone shared the same loss, which created a sense of connection and mutual support.
“No one really knows where to go next. Everyone sees that Russia isn’t stopping. And that’s where the hopelessness begins. No one has a direction anymore. The uncertainty is everywhere,” she said.
Seizing the day
War is slowly draining the life out of Kramatorsk, as if warning that it may be the next city to be reduced to rubble.
Daria Horlova still remembers it as a bustling place where, at 9 p.m., life in the central square was just getting started. Now it’s deserted at all hours and 9 p.m. is when a strict curfew begins. The city is regularly bombed thanks to its proximity to the front line about 21 kilometers (13 miles) east.
“It’s still terrifying — when something’s flying overhead or strikes nearby, especially when it hits the city,” the 18-year-old said. “You want to cry, but there are no emotions left. No strength.”
Horlova studies remotely at a local university that relocated to another region and works as a nail artist. One day, she hopes to open her own salon. For now, she and her boyfriend are stuck in limbo, unsure of what to do next.
“It’s terrifying that most of the Donetsk region is occupied — and that it was Russia who attacked,” she said. “That’s why it feels like everything could change at any moment. Just look at Kostiantynivka — not long ago, life there was normal. And now …”
To distract herself from the anxiety, and the difficult decision she might soon have to make to leave, Horlova tries to focus on what brings her joy in the moment.
She already was evacuated from Kramatorsk once, earlier in the war, and doesn’t want to repeat it.
Instead of dwelling on what the future could hold, she asked her boyfriend, a tattoo artist, to ink a large tattoo of a goat skull on her right leg, something she has dreamed about for years.
“I think you just have to do things — and do them as soon as you can,” she said. “Being here, I know this tattoo will be a memory of Kramatorsk, if I end up leaving.”
___
Vasilisa Stepanenko and Yehor Konovalov contributed to this report.
Vladimir Putin is on a roll the past few weeks. First President Trump invited him to Anchorage. Then he got a three-way hug with China’s President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a summit in China. And an invitation to a grand military parade in Beijing.
Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Putin had been shunted to the fringes of summit group photos. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he had been treated as a pariah by the United States and Europe. Indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, he could travel only to countries that wouldn’t arrest him. In short, Moscow was not being treated with the respect it believed it deserved.
Trump thought that by literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska — and clapping as the Russian loped down the red carpet — he could reset the bilateral relationship. And it did. But not the way Trump intended.
The Alaskan summit convinced the Russians that the current administration is willing to throw the sources of American global power out the window.
Trade partners, geopolitical allies and alliances — everything is on the table for Trump. The U.S. president believes this shows his power; the Russians see this as a low-cost opportunity to degrade American influence. Putin was trained by the KGB to recognize weakness and exploit it.
There is no evidence that being friendly to Putin and agreeing with Russian positions are going to make Moscow more willing to stop fighting in Ukraine. Overlooking Russia’s intensifying hybrid attacks on Europe, in February, Vice President JD Vance warned Europe that it should be focusing instead on the threat to democracy “from within.” This followed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth‘s assurances that Ukraine would never join NATO. Trump has suggested that U.S. support for NATO and Europe is contingent on those countries paying up. In an event that sent Moscow pundits to pop the Champagne, Trump told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office that he just didn’t “have the cards” and should stop trying to beat Russia.
Did any of this bring Putin to the negotiating table? No.
In fact, the Kremlin indicated a readiness to talk with Trump about the war only when Trump threatened “very, very powerful” sanctions in mid-July. This time, he seemed serious about it. The Alaska summit happened a month later. The tougher Trump is with Russia, the more likely he is to get any kind of traction in negotiations. It’s unfortunate that the president has now gone back to vague two-weekdeadlines for imposing sanctions that never materialize.
Russia believes it will win the war. China has been a steady friend, willing to sell Russia cars and dual-use technology that ends up in drones that are attacking Ukrainian cities. It has also become Russia’s largest buyer of crude oil and coal. Western sanctions have not been biting the Russian economy, though they have nibbled away at state revenues. Europe and the United States have not been willing to apply the kind of economic pressure that would seriously dent Russia’s ability to carry on the war.
Putin keeps saying that a resolution to the war requires that the West address the “root causes” of the war. These causes, for Russia, relate to the way it was treated after losing the Cold War. The three Baltic nations joined Europe as fast as they could. Central and Eastern European countries decided that they would rather be part of NATO than the Warsaw Pact. When Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine started asking for membership in the European Union and NATO, Russia realized it wouldn’t be able to convince them to stay with economic appeal or soft power. It had to use force. Unable to demonstrate the attraction of its suffocating embrace, or the value of its Eurasian Economic Union, Russia believed it had to use force to keep Ukraine by its side. It reminds one of a grotesque Russian expression: “If he beats you, it means he loves you.”
The real “root cause” of the war in Ukraine is Russia’s inability to accept that centuries of empire do not confer the right to dominate former colonies forever. Mongolia learned this. As did the British. And the French. And the Ottomans. The Austro-Hungarians.
Eventually this war will end. But not soon. Russia is insisting on maximalist demands that Ukraine cannot agree to, which include control over territory it hasn’t managed to occupy. Ukraine will not stop fighting until it is sure that Russia will not attack again. Achieving that degree of certainty with flimsy security guarantees is impossible.
In the meantime, Ukrainian cities on the frontline will continue being wiped out, citizens in Kherson will continue being subjects of “human safari” for Russian drone operators, people across Ukraine will continue experiencing daily air raids that send them scurrying into shelters. Soldiers, volunteers, civilians and children will continue dying. Trump appears to care about the thousands of daily casualties. Most of these are Russian soldiers who have been sent to their death by a Russian state that doesn’t see their lives as worth preserving.
Trump is understandably frustrated with his inability to “stop the killing” because he has assumed that satisfying Russian demands is the answer. The opposite is true: Only by showing — proving — to Russia that its demands are unattainable will the U.S. persuade the Kremlin to consider meaningful negotiations. Countries at war come to the negotiating table not because they are convinced to abandon their objectives. They sit down when they realize their goals are unattainable.
Alexandra Vacroux is the vice president for strategic engagement at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Insights
L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.
The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.
Ideas expressed in the piece
Putin has successfully leveraged recent diplomatic engagements to break out of international isolation, using meetings with Xi Jinping and Modi, along with Trump’s invitation to Alaska, to demonstrate that Western attempts to sideline Russia have failed. These high-profile gatherings signal to the world that Russia remains a significant player on the global stage despite sanctions and international legal proceedings.
Trump’s accommodating approach toward Putin represents a fundamental misreading of Russian psychology and strategic thinking, as Putin was trained to recognize and exploit weakness rather than respond to friendship with reciprocal gestures. The president’s willingness to question support for NATO and suggest contingent relationships with allies signals to Moscow that American global influence can be degraded at low cost.
Russia only demonstrates willingness to engage in meaningful negotiations when faced with credible threats of severe consequences, as evidenced by the Kremlin’s indication of readiness to talk only after Trump threatened “very, very powerful” sanctions in July. Conversely, accommodating gestures and vague deadlines for sanctions that never materialize encourage Russian intransigence.
The fundamental driver of the conflict stems from Russia’s inability to accept the end of its imperial dominance over former territories, not the grievances about post-Cold War treatment that Moscow frequently cites. Russia’s resort to force against Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova reflects its failure to maintain influence through economic appeal or soft power, revealing an outdated imperial mindset that refuses to acknowledge former colonies’ right to self-determination.
Meaningful negotiations will only occur when Russia recognizes that its maximalist territorial and political demands are unattainable through military means, requiring sustained pressure rather than premature concessions. Current Russian demands for control over territory it hasn’t occupied and Ukraine’s complete capitulation demonstrate that Moscow still believes it can achieve total victory.
Different views on the topic
The Russia-China partnership faces significant structural limitations that constrain the depth of their cooperation, despite public declarations of “no limits” friendship. While both nations conduct joint military exercises and maintain substantial trade relationships, their military collaboration remains “carefully managed and circumscribed by each nation’s broader strategic interests,” with no mutual defense agreements or deep operational integration between their armed forces[1].
India’s apparent warming toward China and Russia reflects strategic autonomy principles rather than genuine alignment toward an anti-Western axis, as fundamental tensions between New Delhi and Beijing persist over unresolved border disputes and strategic competition in the Indian Ocean region[2]. Recent diplomatic gestures may be tactical responses to trade tensions rather than indicators of a permanent realignment away from partnerships with Australia, Japan, the European Union, and other democratic allies[2].
The potential for wedging strategies between Russia and China remains viable due to underlying structural tensions and competing interests, particularly in Central Asia where both powers seek influence. American policymakers increasingly recognize that the “reverse Nixon” approach of driving wedges between Moscow and Beijing could exploit inherent limitations in their partnership, as their relationship represents neither unlimited friendship nor a completely stable alliance[4][5].
China’s military cooperation with Russia serves Beijing’s interests in testing tactics and equipment while maintaining careful distance from direct involvement in conflicts that could jeopardize its broader strategic goals[1]. Chinese support for Russian drone production and dual-use technology transfers reflects calculated assistance that stops short of full military alliance, suggesting Beijing prioritizes its own strategic flexibility over unconditional support for Russian objectives[3].
President Donald Trump says he’s ready to punish Russia with a “second phase” of sanctions after it launched its largest-ever barrage of drone and missile strikes on Sunday, damaging a cabinet building and killing a mother and her baby.
“Yeah, I am,” Trump told a reporter, who asked whether he’s ready to move forward with more sanctions following months of failing to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to cease his military operations or meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump said he still has plans to chat with Putin “over the next couple of days” though it remains unclear what he hopes to get out of the latest conversation.
A family with a baby take shelter in a building basement during a Russian missile and drone strike on Kyiv, Ukraine on Sept. 7, 2025.(Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
“Look, we’re going to get it done,” he told reporters on Sunday. “The Russia-Ukraine situation. We’re going to get it done.”
Trump said he was “not thrilled” with Russia’s Sunday attack, which damaged the Cabinet of Ministers Building in Kyiv and killed four, including a mother and her baby, after 810 drones and 13 missiles were fired across Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force said it neutralized 747 drones and four of the fired missiles.
“I am not thrilled with what’s happening there,” Trump said. “I believe we’re going to get it settled. But I am not happy with them. I’m not happy with anything having to do with that war.”
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as leaves the White House in Washington, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The strike came just days after Putin alleged he was willing to meet with Zelenskyy so long as the Ukrainian leader traveled to Moscow – a move Western and Ukrainian officials alike said was not only a dangerous proposition for Zelenskyy, but lacked any real effort by Putin to engage in good faith negotiations to end the war.
Trump told reporters on Sunday that European leaders will also be heading to Washington D.C. this week to discuss next steps in ending the war, though he did not detail who will make the trip and whether Zelenskyy would be among them.
Putin said last month that his terms for ending the war would focus on freezing the front lines where they stand in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, but appeared to suggest that Ukraine would need to withdraw its forces from Donetsk and Luhansk, amid other stipulations.
Rescue workers extinguish a fire in a 9-story apartment building in the Sviatoshynskyi district, hit by a Russian drone and partially destroyed from the 4th to the 8th floors in Kyiv, Ukraine on Sept. 7, 2025.(Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
But on Monday, Ukraine’s military said it had recaptured the strategically important town of Zarichne in Donetsk – a region which Russia was assessed to occupy roughly 75% of last month.
Zarichne sits near Luhansk – a region which Russia is assessed to nearly fully occupy – and is near key transport routes connecting strategically important cities in Donetsk.
Ukraine last month also said it had made advances in areas near Pokrovsk in western Donetsk, where Russian forces have been concentrating their summer operation efforts.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
In Ukraine, crowdfunding foundations play an outsize role in keeping elite units supplied with FPV drones.
One renowned group, the Sternenko Foundation, delivers new, updated drones in days or weeks.
Drone pilots say it’s often the difference between life and death on the rapidly changing battlefield.
Editor’s note: This story features several interviewees who requested to be identified only by their first name or call sign for their safety.
Every few weeks, Ukrainian bridal shop owner Ilia scrapes together a donation — usually no more than $7.
“If I had any doubts about how my money is being used, I wouldn’t give it,” said the grizzled 33-year-old, who is exempt from military service because he is blind in one eye.
Much of that money goes to the Sternenko Foundation, a prominent volunteer group that uses civilian donations to equip Ukrainian defenders with thousands of attack drones. The foundation runs regular online fundraisers, spreading the word on Telegram to Ukrainians like Ilia.
Ilia walks in this park almost every night with his wife, Tatyana, he said. The soldiers’ names are blurred out.Ilia/Business Insider
He’s one of the hundreds of thousands contributing to Ukraine’s extraordinary crowdfunding of its embattled military, which has become a key pillar of the war effort. With Ukrainian forces strapped for resources, crowdfunders domestically and globally raise money for anything Kyiv’s Western allies don’t usually provide, from civilian trucks and defensive drone nets to tourniquets and electric generators.
The Sternenko Foundation, run by Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko, specializes in fundraising for first-person-view drones, the most widely used weapon on Ukraine’s battlefield. The group has gained renown among soldiers for providing drones with rapidly updating software and designs. Some pilots say they vastly outperform the drones supplied by Ukraine’s government.
Ilia, like thousands of other donors, sends his money through the foundation’s website — then watches the results on Telegram. Units receiving drones from Sternenko post videos of battlefield hits, mixing heavy metal soundtrack with footage of their drones blasting into infantry troops and artillery.
Sternenko, trained as a lawyer, is a prominent internet personality in Ukraine.Global Images Ukraine/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
For Ilia, the crowdfunding movement is turning his pocket change into real combat power that he can witness.
It’s a remarkably cost-effective formula in the age of modern war. The Sternenko Foundation typically aims to raise $250,000 per day, and its recipients say they are inflicting damage to Russian military hardware that collectively reaches into the billions of dollars over the last three years. As is the norm, they back up most hits with videos.
A famed beneficiary of the fund, the Ronin drone unit of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade in Zaporizhzhia, touts perhaps one of the war’s most audacious examples of asymmetric warfare.
Ronin pilots said in January that they had used a 10-inch FPV drone, worth $500, to disable a Buk medium-range air defense system estimated to be worth about $40 million. An uploaded video showed a drone approaching a modern Buk-M3 launcher from on high, before slamming into its missiles.
Over the next few months, Ronin FPV drones pushed deeper and deeper into Russian-held territory. In February, the pilots uploaded videos of attacks against six more Buk systems.
Last year, the Ronin pilots said they had struck just one of the SAMs. By the end of summer in 2025, their videos showed that they’d hit at least 15 in eight months.
The wrath of donated drones
The recent Buk strikes only happened because of Sternenko’s drones, a pilot from the Ronin unit, named Andriy, told Business Insider.
The Sternenko Foundation says it’s delivered over 210,000 drones since the war began, a small fraction of the 2.2 million total drones that Ukraine reported producing in 2024 alone.
Pilots like Andriy, however, say Sternenko’s drones are different.
Battlefield conditions shift fast, so the Sternenko team regularly asks pilots what upgrades are needed. Andriy said the volunteers swiftly relay that information to manufacturers, and then deliver drones with updated hardware and software in days or weeks.
“Even at night, if we are on the attack, and any problems arise, we are in contact with the drone developer, and we can solve it on the spot,” the senior soldier said.
That short feedback loop allowed for constant small tweaks to Sternenko’s drones, Andriy said, so the Ronin pilots gradually improved their 10-inch platforms. These are the workhorses of Ukraine’s FPV drones — radio-controlled, battery-powered quadcopters that use 7- to 12-inch propellers to fly.
Originally designed as flying cameras, they’ve become one of the war’s primary weapons after soldiers started fitting the cheap platforms with small, explosive payloads like rocket-propelled grenades that typically weigh 10 pounds or less. Pilots fly them right into their targets — armored vehicles, fortified positions, and soldiers.
Both sides are now locked in a perpetual race to develop new drone defenses, such as jammers that disrupt their radio signals, which drives the need for constant upgrades in the field.
A volunteer holds a ready-made FPV drone in a drone workshop in April 2024 in Lviv.Global Images Ukraine/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Thanks to the updates on Sternenko’s funded drones, the Ronins eventually received FPV quadcopters that could fly reliably beyond 18 miles. Many of Russia’s Buks were positioned beyond that limit, Andriy said.
“We started hitting Buks as fast and as efficiently as we could,” the drone pilot said. Sternenko’s volunteers also provided a new type of drone that acted as a signal repeater, he said, strengthening the wireless communications link between the drone and its operator in jammed areas.
Andriy said the Ronin unit typically takes three to four FPV drones to finish off a Buk air defense system and estimates that it cost them 55 drones, or $27,500, to disable 15 systems collectively worth between $150 million and $600 million.
A striking cost ratio
That cost ratio means that for every $1 spent by donors through Sternenko, the Ronin pilots were inflicting at least roughly $5,450 worth of damage to Russia’s military.
Independent analysts told Business Insider it’s difficult to determine the exact dollar value of these strikes, but that their cost efficiency is astronomically high.
“A Buk-M3 battery is valued at around $100 million, but that would be the export price,” said Benjamin Blandin, a researcher with the Japanese nonprofit Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies.
Older batteries, such as the Buk-M1, might have cost foreign customers around $45 million. Still, Blandin cautioned that the Russian defense ministry is known to purchase homegrown assets, such as tanks like the T-72, at a far cheaper rate than the sale price for other nations.
Many estimates say that, with such a deep discount, the Buk-M1 costs Moscow about $10 million per system.
The Buk relies on launchers and radars that work in tandem to counter air threats.Alexander NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
A Buk battery also consists of many parts, including multiple launchers, a command post, and a main radar.
“Typically, the radar itself, and fire control computers are the most expensive part of the system,” said Robert Tollast, a researcher of land warfare for the UK-based Royal United Services Institute.
When analyzing the Ronin videos of Buk hits, he said the unit clearly damaged radars in some clips.
Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher of arms transfers for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said that destroying one critical Buk component, such as the main radar, could put the rest out of action, prompting Ukrainians to say they destroyed the entire thing.
“But no matter what price is taken or how out-of-action the system had been made, it’s still a very much higher USD value lost than that of a few drones used against it,” he added, referring to US dollars.
Donated drones, a class above the rest
Russia, realizing its Buks were being hunted, started pulling them further away from the frontline in Zaporizhzhia, Andriy said. Still, he said his unit was able to use donated drones to hit a Buk at a distance of 55 kilometers, or 34 miles — a staggering feat for today’s FPV technology.
“When we mentioned the distance to other foundations, their eyes went wide with surprise,” Andriy said.
Out of roughly 30 to 40 FPV drones he pilots in a two-day shift, Andriy estimated that 95% typically come from the foundation.
Ukrainian drone pilots receiving drones from Sternenko said they greatly prefer volunteer FPVs.Maks Muravsky/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Ukrainian soldiers also receive drones purchased by the Ministry of Defense. Andriy said these can be outdated, and he prefers the crowdfunded drones.
The commander of the Dovbush Hornets, the drone unit of the 68th Jaeger Brigade in Pokrovsk, told Business Insider that state-funded drone deliveries suffer from a typical issue that plagues governments: It can take too long to turn immediate feedback into updated systems.
In a war where techniques and jamming frequencies evolve in a matter of weeks, that delay can be the difference between victory and death.
“With the Sternenko situation, their representatives call the unit and ask what specific technical characteristics of drones they need, and they just buy the one that suits the unit,” said the major, whose call sign is Fierce. “But for the Ministry of Defense, they already have the drones accumulated, so they just give them to the unit.”
State-funded drones are needed, but often have to be sent to a manufacturer for retweaking.
While Ukraine is filled with drone manufacturers, some military units also have their own drone workshops and specialists.Scott Peterson/Getty Images
“These drones are sometimes impossible to use on certain sections of the front lines,” Fierce said. “So the fighters have to invest their own salaries in the drones, to modify them and change the control frequencies. It takes time and their personal money.”
The issue was common enough for the Sternenko Foundation to launch a refitting project for Ministry of Defense drones, called reDrone, primarily to add hardware upgrades such as motor controllers.
In a statement to Business Insider, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that its provided FPV drones are purchased from private manufacturers “to create a sustainable, large-scale, and predictable supply system” for its troops.
“At the same time, in wartime conditions, certain units may have specific needs that can be promptly met through volunteer initiatives,” it wrote. “The flexibility of drone supplies from volunteers complements the large-scale state system of equipping the army.”
Civilians at the heart of the fight
In Konotop, just 60 miles from the northern front, Ilia is also a volunteer. He said he’s driven donated vehicles and equipment dozens of times to soldiers in the greater Sumy and wartorn Donbas regions.
Ilia said he was nearly killed on four occasions on these supply runs near the frontlines.
“God decided I am more useful here on this Earth,” he laughed.
Ukraine, strained from years of war, has long relied on its civilians to support the front with battle supplies.
“This war is a black hole that just keeps sucking up all of our resources,” said Oleksandr Skarlat, the Sternenko Foundation’s director.
The overwhelming majority of donations received by the foundation come in small amounts from Ukrainian civilians, said Skarlat, a national finswimming athlete before the invasion.
The foundation says it raises roughly 300 million hryvnia, or about $7.2 million, from over 450,000 individual contributions a month.
The group operates like a hub, connecting manufacturers with drone units, then paying for and delivering drones to those troops, Skarlat explained to Business Insider.
“The foundation’s advantage is speed and time,” he said. “An expensive drone is not always better. If new components are released, they must be purchased and transferred to the units immediately.”
Members of a drone unit record themselves thanking the Sternenko Foundation for a new delivery of FPV drones on August 20.Sternenko Foundation website/Business Insider
That process is now a well-oiled machine, but it is limited by whatever resources Sternenko’s team can raise. They try to prioritize squads that produce better results, such as the Ronins and Dovbush Hornets, which operate in Pokrovsk.
Sternenko, a popular internet personality, uses his following to promote fundraisers and repost strike footage uploaded by recipient units. In May, he was shot in the thigh during an assassination attempt that Ukraine’s security service said was orchestrated by Russia.
As proof to donors, the foundation meticulously records its drone deliveries, their cost, and recipients in a public database. Sternenko’s team posts daily videos of drone squads receiving hundreds of FPVs, paid for by civilians.
Over time, the foundation has become one of Ukraine’s premier crowdfunders, well-known among the military units flying the deadly FPVs filling the battlefield.
An example of the reports of drones sent to each Ukrainian unit, with payment documents linked to each entry.Business Insider
“I don’t want to offend anyone,” said Fierce, the Dovbush Hornets commander. “But there are some organizations and people that try to help, and they don’t even understand the quality of their drones and how they can fit the tasks of our units. The Sternenko Foundation has a well-built base, and they have the quality.”
A formula that works, oft-uncredited
More recently, the foundation is asking civilians to donate to a new project, dubbed “Shahedoriz,” that raises funds for interceptor drone development. Ukraine, hard-pressed to stop Russia’s intensifying Shahed waves, is trying to develop more interceptors that can destroy enemy drones and missiles to shore up its struggling air defenses.
One of the new drones is the Sting, a high-speed piloted FPV drone designed by Ukrainian manufacturer Wild Hornets to chase down the Shahed-136.
Alex Roslin, a Canada-based foreign coordinator for Ukrainian drone manufacturer Wild Hornets, said the Sting has achieved more than 130 successful kills so far. All of the interceptors were purchased by Sternenko, he told Business Insider.
Roslin believes local crowdfunders like the foundation play an outsize role in the war but are strangely overlooked in the West.
“Without these volunteers and the donors who generously contribute, for Ukraine, it would be a catastrophe,” he said.
Ukraine has seen limited use of interceptor drones to down the Shahed, but has in recent months been driving hard at development to counter Russia’s growing drone waves.Wild Hornets/Telegram
Skarlat put it in stronger terms. “If not for the support of the volunteers,” he said, “Ukraine would most likely already be in the hands of the occupation regime.”
At night, Ilia looks up and watches Shaheds hurtle through the Konotop sky, Ukrainian tracer bullets and drones soaring up to meet them. “This is why we just keep donating, keep sending money,” Ilia said.
Many of the Shaheds fly onward to Kyiv, but some strike at home in Konotop too, and the number of casualties in the city has grown steadily, he said.
A Ukrainian mobile fire group tries to down a Russian Shahed. With the exploding drones increasing in number with time, Kyiv has been pushing hard for new solutions to guard its skies.Oleg Palchyk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Ilia, grinning, said he doesn’t seek shelter during the air raid warnings. Three and a half years of war have driven the fear of bombs from him, he said. But when asked in a video call about his son in the third grade, and the boy’s future, the bridal apparel businessman’s smile fell.
After a few moments of silence, he cleared his throat. “My main motivation is him,” he said. “It is my motivation to keep helping and donating.”
“I don’t need the Russians to die. I won’t go to their home when this is over. I just want them to leave so I can protect my family,” he said. “We just want to live a normal life.”
The London Timesreports that the Trump Administration has been deporting Russian dissenters who fled Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, sending them back to Russia, and even apparently helping Russian authorities persecute them:
On August 27, less than a fortnight after President Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska, dozens of Russians were rounded up and deported. Among them was Artyom Vovchenko, 27, a deserter from the war in Ukraine. He is facing a prison sentence of up to decade or could be sent back to the front line.….
Although the deportation of Russians to Russia has accelerated under Trump, the policy began under his predecessor Joe Biden. According to Dmitry Valuev, 46, president of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, an organisation that supports political refugees, deportations under Biden were smaller in number.
He said Russian deportees on those flights avoided returning to Russia by begging for their passports during layovers in China and Morocco and buying flights to alternative destinations.
However, the US now appears to have enlisted the help of the Egyptian government to ensure the migrants are delivered back to Moscow.
The first mass deportation this year took place in June when 47 Russians were put on a flight to Egypt and returned to Russia via Cairo.
On August 27, between 30 and 60 people were sent to Russia on the same route. Some tried to get off the plane in Cairo but were restrained by Egyptian officials and forced to board the onward flight to Moscow, according to Valuev. He believes that US immigration authorities are now working with the Russian FSB [Putin’s secret police agency].
I think the June deportation and the August deportation were co-ordinated with the Russian authorities,” he said. “The middlemen in the US immigration system and the Russian FSB could not talk to each other directly without approval from higher up. Someone gave that approval.”
When the dissidents arrived in Russia, the Russian authorities were given documents relating to their asylum applications in the US. Those dossiers, outlining their political beliefs and criticisms of Putin, could be used to prosecute them back home, campaigners believe.
Khodorkovsky said the treatment of Russian dissidents by the US posed the question of “whether the current administration is prepared to act as a leader of the democratic world”.
He said the deportations were particularly troubling given the Russians were “accompanied by documents that can help fabricate criminal cases against them, and all of this at the expense of the American taxpayer”.
“This is no longer about democratic leadership — it’s about the risk of being seen as an ally of dictators,” he said.
As the article notes, abusive treatment of Russian dissenters fleeing Putin occurred under Biden, as well. And I condemned it at the time. But Trump’s expansion of the deportations and collaboration with the Russian government is worse.
Beginning soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I have argued the US and other Western nations should open their doors to Russians fleeing Putin’s increasingly repressive regime. It’s the right thing to do for both moral and strategic reasons. Morally, it’s wrong to bar people fleeing brutal repression and, in some cases, seeking to avoid being drafted into an unjust war of aggression. Strategically, we benefit from depriving Putin of valuable manpower and from enabling the Russian refugees to contribute to our economy and scientific innovation (Russian immigrants and refugees are disproportionate contributors to the latter). I have also advocated for Ukrainian refugees, whose interest I cannot easily be accused of neglecting.
Of course, under Trump, policy often seems to be driven by a desire to kowtow to Putin and imitate his authoritarian methods. From that standpoint, deporting dissenters back to the regime that oppresses them makes a kind of sense. Just not the kind that any minimally decent person should ever support.
UPDATE: I suppose this is of a piece with Trump’s efforts to deport refugees from other oppressive anti-American regimes, such as those who fled Cuba and Venezuela, Iranian Christians, and Afghans who fled the Taliban.(including many who aided the US during the war). But, in one sense, this is even worse, in that US authorities are directly collaborating with the dictatorship in question.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned a large drone attack by Russia that hit a key government building and killed at least two people in Kyiv.
Russia attacked Ukraine with 810 drones and decoys – the largest aerial attack on the country since the war began, Ukraine’s Air Force said.
“Such killings now, when real diplomacy would have started long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” Zelenskyy said in a statement online. He called for sanctions and for strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses.
A column of smoke rises above the building of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine after a Russian drone and missile attack on Sept. 7, 2025, in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Oleksandr Magula/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
“Every additional (air defense) system saves civilians from these vile strikes. The world can force the Kremlin criminals to stop killing; only political will is needed,” Zelenskyy said.
Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force, told The Associated Press that Russia also launched 13 missiles of various types in the attack.
Ukraine shot down and neutralized 747 drones and 4 missiles, according to a statement from the Air Force.
Hits from nine missiles and 54 drones were recorded at 33 locations across Ukraine, and the debris of shot-down targets fell at eight locations, the Air Force said.
Associated Press reporters saw a plume of smoke rising from the roof of Kyiv’s cabinet of ministers building, but it was not immediately clear if the smoke was the result of a direct hit or debris, which would mark an escalation in Russia’s air campaign, which has so far spared government buildings in the city center.
The building is the home of Ukraine’s Cabinet, housing the offices of its ministers. Police blocked access to the building as fire trucks and ambulances arrived.
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a heavily damaged residential building following Russian drone and missile strikes in Kyiv.
GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images
Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said two people were killed and 20 were injured in the attack.
“For the first time, the government building was damaged by an enemy attack, including the roof and upper floors,” said Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko. “We will restore the buildings, but lost lives cannot be returned.”
“The world must respond to this destruction not only with words, but with actions. There is a need to strengthen sanctions pressure — primarily against Russian oil and gas,” she said.
The two people killed were a mother and her 3-month-old child, whose bodies were dug out of the rubble by rescuers, said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s city administration. Initially, Tkachenko said the child was 1 year old. At least 10 locations in Kyiv were damaged in the attack, he added.
The Russian military said Sunday that it used aviation, drones, missiles and artillery to strike military-industrial targets in Ukraine, including drone assembly and storage sites, military airfields, two air defense radar stations and troop positions.
A crying woman walks past a rescuer after a Russian drone and missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Oleksandr Magula/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
The barrage came after European leaders pressed Russian leader Vladimir Putin to work to end the war after 26 of Ukraine’s allies pledged to deploy troops as a “reassurance force” for the war-torn country once the fighting ends.
NATO spokesperson Martin O’Donnell said Polish forces were on alert after the attack, German Patriots in Poland were placed on alert, and an aerial refueler from the Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) aircraft fleet was launched.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Sunday’s attack, saying it shows Putin is “not serious about peace.”
“I’m appalled by the latest brutal overnight assault on Kyiv and across Ukraine,” Starmer said in a statement. “These cowardly strikes show that Putin believes he can act with impunity. He is not serious about peace.”
Zelenskyy has said he is ready to meet Putin to negotiate a peace agreement and has urged President Trump to impose punishing sanctions on Russia to push it to end the war.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that aired Sunday, Zelenskyy said one way to put pressure on Putin is to stop countries from buying energy from Russia, something, he said, some European countries do.
“The most power has White House. And I really count that President Trump will do it, put pressure on Putin,” Zelenskky said. “And, this is only one, one way how to stop the killer. You need to take off his, I mean, to take off his weapon. Energy is his weapon.”
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday that the Russian action was “disappointing” and he believes “there’s going to be a lot of talk today and tomorrow about the level of sanctions and the timing of sanctions.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grilled on vaccines, COVID and CDC turmoil at Senate hearing; Putin warns foreign troops sent to Ukraine would be considered “legitimate targets.”
