Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded that the United States respond to a “brutally savage” Russian strike that he said left more than 20 people dead.

“Directly on people. Ordinary civilians. At the very moment when pensions were being disbursed,” Zelenskyy said of the attack in a post on X.

The strike hit the rural town of Yarova in the Donetsk region. While Russia has denied targeting civilians, tens of thousands have been killed since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion, Reuters reported.

RUSSIA LAUNCHES BARRAGE OF DRONE STRIKES ON UKRAINE, RESULTING IN FOUR CIVILIAN DEATHS

“The Russians continue destroying lives while avoiding new strong sanctions and new strong blows,” Zelenskyy added. “The world must not remain silent. The world must not remain idle… Strong actions are needed to make Russia stop bringing death.”

Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin said the strike was not a “military operation,” but rather that it was “pure terrorism,” according to the Kyiv Independent, which cited his Telegram channel.

Zelenskyy specifically called out the U.S., Europe and the G20 in his post on X following the strike, which included a graphic video of the carnage.

Notably, Zelenskyy did not name NATO. His demand for action from Europe and the G20 comes as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte travels to the United Kingdom, where he will attend a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, according to NATO.

Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin posted a photo of the aftermath of a Russian strike on a rural village, calling the attack an act of “pure terrorism.” (@vadym.filashkin/Instagram)

RUSSIA LAUNCHES LARGEST ATTACK ON UKRAINE THIS MONTH FOLLOWING TRUMP’S MEETINGS WITH PUTIN, ZELENSKYY

The White House has yet to respond to the strike or Zelenskyy’s demand. However, the Trump administration has made ending the brutal Russia-Ukraine war a priority, with President Donald Trump meeting with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Last month, Trump and Putin met face-to-face in the first meeting between the Russian leader and a U.S. president since 2021. After the high-stakes meeting, Trump and Putin seemed confident that they had made progress toward peace despite not reaching the ceasefire deal that many had hoped for.

President Donald Trump greets Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press)

ZELENSKYY ACCUSES TRUMP OF GIVING PUTIN ‘WHAT HE WANTED’ AT ALASKA SUMMIT

Zelenskyy seemed less convinced, and he recently accused Trump of giving Putin “what he wanted” at the Alaska summit.

“It’s a pity that Ukraine was not there, because I think President Trump gave Putin what he wanted,” Zelenskyy told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on Sept. 7.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and NATO but did not receive immediate responses.

Reports that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plane was targeted by suspected Russian GPS jamming as she travelled from Warsaw to the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv on 31 August have sparked major speculation.

Scrutiny has intensified after official sources flip-flopped between statements, appearing to row back on early claims that the disruption had been caused by suspected Russian interference.

The timeline

The Financial Times broke the story on 1 September, reporting that von der Leyen’s plane — a charter aircraft operated by Luxembourg airline LuxAviation — circled Plovdiv airport for an hour, using paper maps to land, after being targeted by “suspected Russian GPS interference.”

The same day, the European Commission stated it had received information from the Bulgarian authorities which suggested that the alleged jamming was “due to blatant interference from Russia.”

Later that day, prominent flight tracking site FlightRadar24 issued a statement in which it cast doubt over the notion there was any GPS jamming in the area around Plovdiv at the time of the plane’s landing.

The data provided by FlightRadar24 also revealed that the flight had taken nine minutes longer than scheduled, contracting the original claim made by the Financial Times that the aircraft had been circling Plovdiv airport for an hour.

Later, the Financial Times’ claims that “paper maps” had been used to conduct the landing were contested after Bulgarian authorities released a statement specifying that a ground-based radio navigation system known as ILS was used.

As the story unravelled, a recording in which the plane’s pilot reported “issues with the GPS” to Bulgarian air traffic controllers emerged, seemingly confirming some kind of interruption to the aircraft’s navigation systems.

But days later, on 4 September, in an interview with Bulgarian channel bTV, Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov denied that the government had submitted any information on the matter to the European Commission, contradicting the Commission’s assertion that Bulgarian authorities suspected the disruption was the result of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare.

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, Bulgarian aviation authorities did hand the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) a report of the conversation between the pilot of the plane and the control tower, but while this exchange referred to “minor issues” with the GPS, it did not mention Russian interference. 

“EASA still needs to remove the computers on board the aircraft and see what these computers registered,” Karadjov added.

Later that day, Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, said there was “no evidence” of “prolonged interference or jamming” of the GPS signal around Plovdiv airport in an address to Parliament.

Zhelyazkov later appeared to back-peddle on his earlier claims, stating that although no jamming had been detected by “ground instruments”, this didn’t exclude the possibility of “onboard devices” having experienced jamming.

Zhelyazkov subsequently ordered aviation authorities to launch an investigation into what happened, despite Bulgarian authorities initially stating there wouldn’t be one.

Conflicting perspectives from analysts

Euronews consulted several analysts, some of which stand by the possibility of a “spoofing” or “jamming incident,” while others firmly asserted that there is no evidence of GPS jamming in the area around Plovdiv on the day in question.

Ian Petchenik, director of communications for Flightradar24, told Euronews that the “aircraft’s transponder reported good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing,” based on their analysis of Navigation Integrity Category (NIC) values, which is an indicator of the quality of navigational data received by the aircraft.

However, Petchenik added that interference “could have been internal to the aircraft, or from another source.”

But Mahmoud Elsanhoury from Finland’s Vaasa University told Euronews that spoofers have developed increasingly sophisticated techniques which allow them to make it appear like a good signal level is being transmitted to an aircraft, when in reality it is not.

“If the signal level is good and the pilot is going around in circles, this is a a very big indicator that it was a spoofing incident”, Elsanhoury explained.

Although there is a plethora of doubts surrounding this incident, Moscow has intensified GPS jamming targeting planes and ships since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, primarily in the area surrounding the Baltic Sea. 

“We are very well aware that unfortunately this incident is not specific to the president, meaning that it occurs on a very regular basis to many aircrafts flying in particular next to our eastern border,” a European Commission spokesperson said on Thursday, adding that “coordinated action from the European Union is needed” to tackle the threat.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration operations for now in Los Angeles, the latest victory for President Donald Trump’s administration at the high court.

The conservative majority lifted a restraining order from a judge who found that “roving patrols” were conducting indiscriminate stops in and around LA. The order had barred immigration agents from stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the broad order went too far in restricting how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can carry out brief stops for questioning.

“To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors,” he wrote in a concurrence with the majority’s brief, unexplained order. He suggested that stops in which force is used could yet face more legal pushback.

In a stinging dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision comes as ICE agents also step up enforcement in Washington amid Trump’s unprecedented federal takeover of the capital city’s law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard.

Trump’s Republican administration argued the order wrongly restricted agents carrying out its widespread crackdown on illegal immigration.

U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong in Los Angeles had found a “mountain of evidence” that enforcement tactics were violating the Constitution. The plaintiffs included U.S. citizens swept up in immigration stops. An appeals court had left Frimpong’s ruling in place.

The lawsuit will now continue to unfold in California. It was filed by immigrant advocacy groups that accused Trump’s administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people during his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration in the Los Angeles area.

Department of Homeland Security attorneys have said immigration officers target people based on illegal presence in the U.S., not skin color, race or ethnicity. Even so, the Justice Department argued that the order wrongly restricted the factors that ICE agents can use when deciding who to stop.

The Los Angeles region has been a battleground for the Trump administration after its hard-line immigration strategy spurred protests and the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines. The number of immigration raids in the LA area appeared to slow shortly after Frimpong’s order came down in July, but recently they have become more frequent again, including an operation in which agents jumped out of the back of a rented box truck and made arrests at an LA Home Depot store.

The plaintiffs argued that her order only prevents federal agents from making stops without reasonable suspicion, something that aligns with the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent.

“Numerous U.S. citizens and others who are lawfully present in this country have been subjected to significant intrusions on their liberty,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “Many have been physically injured; at least two were taken to a holding facility.”

The Trump administration said the order is too restrictive, “threatening agents with sanctions if the court disbelieves that they relied on additional factors in making any particular stop.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer also argued the order can’t stand under the high court’s recent decision restricting universal injunctions, though the plaintiffs disagreed.

The order from Frimpong, who was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, barred authorities from using factors like apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone’s occupation as the only basis for reasonable suspicion for detention. Its covered a combined population of nearly 20 million people, nearly half of whom identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Plaintiffs included three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens. One of the citizens was Los Angeles resident Brian Gavidia, who was shown in a June 13 video being seized by federal agents as he yelled, “I was born here in the States. East LA, bro!”

Gavidia was released about 20 minutes later after showing agents his identification, as was another citizen stopped at a car wash, according to the lawsuit.

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Associated Press writer Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court and immigration at https://apnews.com/hub/immigration.