Ukraine war latest: EU boss told she should 'know better' over comments on post-war troops (2025)

Thanks for following our live updates today. We'll be back tomorrow with more from the war in Ukraine.

Until then, here's a rundown of the key lines from today:

• A jet carrying the EU Commission president suffered GPS jamming as a result of suspected Russian interference, an EU spokesperson told Sky News;
• But the Kremlin has denied it was behind the interference;
• It comes with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a four-day visit to China, where he held talks today with India's Narendra Modi and Iran's Masoud Pezeshikan;
• Elsewhere, the head of Ukraine's police says Russia was involved in the murder of former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy in Lviv on Saturday;
• While Volodymyr Zelenskyy will take part in the latest 'coalition of the willing' talks in Paris on Thursday, co-chaired by Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer

North Korea's Kim JongUn left for Beijing via his special train to attendChina's celebration of the formal surrender of Japan in the Second World War, Pyongyang's state media KCNA said.

The Kremlin says a meeting between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin is under discussion.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he spoke with NATO chief Mark Rutte today, thanking him for his support for Ukraine.

"We are closely coordinating our efforts," Zelenskyy said.

"Russia has stolen from the world, brazenly taking a significant part of this year. This autumn, we must do everything possible to strengthen our positions."

The optics of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit suggest China and India have much in common, but are they really friends?

Here's India reporter Neville Lazarus on the "Dragon-Elephant Tango".

The head of a Chinese thinktank dedicated to the research and promotion of Beijing has told Sky News that Donald Trump's actions towards the "Global South" countries amounts to bullying.

Speaking to lead world news presenter Yalda Hakim, Victor Gao says the "great success" of this week's Shanghai Cooperation Organisation economic summit in Tianjin is the promotion of international cooperation among its members.

This, he says, is in contrast to the position of a "certain country", which Gao says "really wants to impose its version of the truth to all the other countries, sometimes even by holding a gun at their heads".

"No country should really indulge in the fantasy that it is the sole polarity in the world of today," he says.

Gao's words echo those of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who also called out the "bullying behaviour" of unarmed countries this week.

Hakim says this is clearly a "veiled stab" at the US and Donald Trump, but Gao disagrees.

"I don't think it is veiled. It's very explicit," he says.

"I think there is only one country in the world which really is bullying around many countries in the world, launching the world tariff war... and then it tries to impose itself on other countries as if whatever it dictates should be the real truth.

"This is not the rule of law that most of us really wants to live."

Memorial ceremonies have been held in Lviv and Kyiv this evening in memory of murdered Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy.

Mourners gathered in the central squares of both cities, with a minute's silence held.

On an improvised stage in Kyiv, lamps, baskets of flowers and photos of Parubiy were laid, while a video about his life was shown on a big screen.

Volodymyr Zelensky described Saturday's attack as a "terrible murder" and said a suspect has since been arrested.

By Siobhan Robbins, Europe correspondent

Bulgarian authorities have said they suspect Russia of jamming the GPS system of the jet carrying the EU Commission president on Sunday.

If someone deliberately jams your jet's GPS, it's fair to assume they are trying to threaten or intimidate you.

The Kremlin hasn't responded to Sky News, but their spokesperson told the Financial Times "your information is incorrect", when asked about the allegations.

However, the timing of the alleged interference is interesting.

It happened as:

• the EU is preparing its 19th sanctions package on Russia;
• European leaders are discussing what security guarantees they can offer Ukraine while also trying to persuade the US to get tough;
• And as von der Leyen was on a four-day tour of member states that border or are near to Russia.

She was seeing "first-hand the everyday challenges of threats coming from Russia and its proxies", according to her spokesperson.

These threats are part of the hybrid war numerous European leaders, generals and the NATO chief have repeatedly warned about since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The hybrid attacks they accuse Moscow of range from cyber-attacks to suspected attempts to spy on NATO bases.

I remember Lieutenant General Andre Bodemann, head of Germany's homeland defence command, vividly laying out some of the challenges being faced when I interviewed him last year.

"We have a lot of hybrid threats: that's fake news, disinformation, cyber-attacks, espionage and sabotage... we see drones over my operations cell, for example, we even saw explosives in the vicinity of the NATO pipeline," he said.

These types of attacks have continued and are expected to escalate as the EU puts more pressure on Moscow, according to experts.

Last week, a security source told me that they were aware of several unidentified drones monitoring NATO members' troop movements as they travelled through eastern Germany and the state of Thuringia to the eastern front to transport ammunition to Ukraine.

They suspect this was part of an intelligence gathering exercise by the Russians, as the focus was on movements by NATO nations.

It follows similar allegations published by the New York Times that Russian drones were flying over US weapons routes in Germany.

The Kremlin has denied these and all the previous allegations that it's behind hybrid attacks.

Asked about the New York Times report, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin's press secretary, told journalists the Kremlin had not had time to read the story closely.

"But it's hard to imagine, because then the Germans would have seen it clearly, and they would hardly have kept quiet. So, of course, all this looks more like another newspaper fake," he said.

However, the chief of domestic intelligence for the state of Thuringia, Stephan Kramer, told me his team were taking the reports seriously.

So, with these allegations in mind, plus the fact the GPS jamming happened as the EU is trying to put extra pressure on the Kremlin, many will understand why Bulgaria has said it suspects Russia of being involved.

On the first day back from summer recess, John Healey has been giving a statement to the House of Commons on Ukraine.

The defence secretary updates MPs on the various meetings and summits held at a leaders' level during the summer, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to London and Sir Keir Starmer's trip to Washington.

He says the UK welcomes US President Donald Trump's "dedication to bringing this terrible war to an end".

"We also strongly welcome his commitment to make security guarantees, as he says, 'very secure' with the Europeans," he adds.

'We don't want to make the Russians wiser'

Healey says discussions are ongoing on how Ukraine's allies can protect any potential peace deal.

"We look for contributions to be further confirmed," he says.

"Much of the shape of any deployment of any coalition of the willing will depend on the terms of a peace agreement.

"At this stage, I won't want to offer any more public detail on that, as that would only reinforce Putin's hand and make the Russians wiser."

John Healey is giving a statement on the Ukraine war to MPs.

The defence secretary is addressing efforts to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, following Donald Trump's summit with him in Alaska a few weeks ago.

Despite Vladimir Putin suggesting he reached "understandings" with Donald Trump in Alaska over the path to peace in Ukraine, analysts believe the Russian leader escaped the meeting with the upper hand.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump threatened Moscow with "severe" sanctions unless it made serious steps to end the war.

But those sanctions never came, with Russia since ramping up its nightly attacks on Ukraine, killing 25 during one bombardment of Kyiv last week.

So, has Putin been playing Trump?

"Yes. Absolutely," Russia's former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov tells Sky News' chief presenter Mark Austin.

"He continues conducting a war of attrition, believing that he will win. He still has some economic power because no additional pressure was imposed on him during the year.

"Putin understands this. That's why he'll continue to believe he's on the right and that he's winning."

'Everyone noticed Ukraine's omission'

Putin is currently in China at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) economic summit - see the post below this for more on that.

It's already been noted by Ukraine that the ongoing war was conspicuously left out of the summit's declaration, which Kasyanov says is because a "consensus could not be achieved".

He tells Austin the only real common value held by the various nations attending the SCO summit is an antipathy towards the US.

He said: "Everyone noticed that in the resolution of this high level summit, there was no mention of Ukraine at all. That's because it's absolutely clear that the consensus could not be achieved on this page."