Uber also said it was making a strategic investment in Zipline, a California-based company that has been orchestrating drone deliveries in Texas since 2025. The news comes as Uber's delivery rivals begin to step up their own drone deliveries, thanks to easing government regulations that allow companies to fly farther and cheaper.
The Uber Eats deliveries will start in Zipline's existing market of Dallas-Fort Worth, before eventually expanding to dozens of additional citie …
A major military music festival in Moscow has been canceled four days before it was due to start, the organizers said on Telegram.
The lavish parade, known as the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival, attracts thousands of visitors and brings together dozens of military bands in the heart of Moscow on Red Square near the Kremlin.
The event, which began in 2007 at President Vladimir Putin’s orders, is one of Russia’s most prominent military-themed events, alongside the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow and the Navy Day show in St. Petersburg. Spasskaya “Tower was only canceled once before — in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In its early years, military bands from EU countries, Australia and Canada took part in Spasskaya Tower, though the number of international participants has declined since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
According to the festival’s Telegram channel, “the event has been postponed until 2027 due to circumstances beyond the organizers’ control.”
The move comes amid an increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital.
Overnight, Kyiv’s forces launched one of the largest assaults on Moscow in recent months, with more than 600 drones directed toward the Russian capital and surrounding region. The strikes, which, according to Russian media, targeted the facilities of Wildberries, a major Russian online marketplace, as well as logistics warehouses, sparked massive fires and killed one person.
Earlier in June, the Kremlin canceled another event in Moscow’s Red Square — a gala concert marking Russia Day. The Victory Day parade on May 9 was held on a limited scale and, for the first time in nearly 20 years, without heavy military equipment.
A Spanish F-18 fighter jet on a NATO air-policing mission Sunday shot down a drone that had illegally entered Romanian airspace.
The drone was detected by radar about 24 kilometers north of the eastern city of Galați after entering Romania from Moldova. Having established radar contact, the fighter jet was authorized to shoot it down at 5:01 a.m. Authorities said debris from the destroyed aircraft had fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.
Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for NATO operation headquarters, said additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remained under investigation but that the drone “appears to be Russian.”
“The Ministry of National Defence is constantly monitoring the situation and informs in real time the allied structures about such events,” the ministry added in a statement.
It is the fourth drone shot down by NATO over Romania since the beginning of 2026. In July, Romanian F-16s downed three Russian drones that breached the country’s airspace — the first such interceptions after dozens of incursions since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In May, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Galați, injuring two people.
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine traded strikes over the weekend. Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on Kyiv early Sunday, sparking fires in at least two districts and injuring three people, according to the city’s military administration.
Ukrainian drones also struck the Moscow region overnight in what the regional governor Andrei Vorobyov described as one of the largest attacks to target the area, killing an 83-year-old man.
Jets from NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a drone that entered Latvian airspace overnight, the country’s armed forces reported on X.
The drone was downed near the village of Rugāji in northeastern Latvia, close to the Russian border, after Italian Eurofighters based in Lithuania and Turkish F-16s based in Estonia were scrambled.
The uncrewed aerial vehicle appeared in Latvian airspace “as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare,” said the Latvian National Armed Forces in a press release. Earlier Friday, more than 50 Ukrainian drones attacked targets in Russia’s western regions, including Leningrad and Tver, where they struck Ust-Luga — the second-largest port in Russia — and a warehouse belonging to e-commerce giant Wildberries.
Latvia’s military warned that similar incidents may happen again in the future. “While the Russian aggression in Ukraine is ongoing, the recurrence of such cases when a foreign unmanned aircraft enters or approaches Latvian airspace is possible,” it said.
An air raid alert was declared in four eastern Latvian municipalities at around 4 a.m. local time. The military urged people to stay indoors and away from exterior walls.
After the drone was downed, Sandra Kapteine, head of the Rugāji village administration, told the Latvian Information Agency that the incident “caused no casualties,” as the drone wreckage fell in a “wooded area.”
There has been an uptick in similar incidents over recent months in countries close to the war-zone. A week ago, Bulgarian Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said a Ukrainian-made drone crossed Bulgarian airspace from Romania and exploded near the village of Kardam.
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NATO plans to fortify its eastern edge using drones, sensors and artificial intelligence in a massive network designed to spot and help repel a potential Russian attack.
Western officials say the alliance is exploring AI-assisted drone operations as part of the broad effort to bolster its defenses. The aim, however, isn’t full autonomy; instead, machines could help to pilot the drones while human operators make the call on what they strike.
The approach echoes what Ukraine is already doing. The embattled country is increasingly incorporating AI into its drone operations, but both soldiers and defense tech firms have repeatedly emphasized that humans must remain at the center of the fight, even as the war becomes more robotic.
For NATO, AI-assisted drones would be part of the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative — a digital battlespace network the alliance is building to track threats along its borders with Russia and Belarus, which stretch from northern Finland to the Black Sea.
The new concept includes thousands of drones, sensors and satellites linked with AI to detect potential breaches of allied territory and repel attacks as the first line of defense. Conventional military forces, such as tanks, fighter jets and artillery, will remain the backbone.
U.S. Army Maj. Ben Schiff, a software operations officer, told Bild — which, like Business Insider and POLITICO, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — that both Ukraine and Russia still rely on humans to control drones.
While some systems have AI or machine-learning capabilities that allow brief moments of autonomy in flight, piloting is primarily performed by operators on the ground. Schiff said that “the most boring parts of flying”— drones loitering above the battlefield looking for targets — should be automated. But when it comes to deciding what the drone should strike, that’s where a human comes into play.
“So the humans are deciding what the drone does, but they don’t necessarily need to take the action of flying it because we don’t have a million pilots. We can’t fly a million drones at the same time,” said Schiff at the U.S. Army Europe and Africa headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Schiff is a product manager for the EFDI Data Backbone, a developing framework designed to help NATO forces detect, classify, share and act on information at speed and scale. The backbone bridges incompatible computer and command systems across multiple allied nations, allowing real-time data to flow from forward-deployed sensors all the way back to headquarters.
The goal is to help NATO move beyond today’s linear system — called a “kill chain” — where information moves from the front line back to a decision-maker and then back again to the battlefront to a “kill web,” where data from sensors can be rapidly passed to weapons systems and operators.
“The value of a drone, sensor or other capability is not determined solely by its individual performance,” said Maj. Matt Blubaugh, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Europe and Africa. “Its effectiveness depends on how well it integrates into the broader operational ecosystem.”
Learning from Ukraine
Ukraine is already pioneering the integration of AI into military operations.
Soldiers observe a drone in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine on June 14, 2025. | Florent Vergnes/AFP via Getty Images
On the battlefield, Ukraine has made significant progress in using AI to support functions like decision-making, drone navigation, terminal guidance and precision, said Andrii Hrytseniuk, the CEO of the Ukrainian state-backed innovation platform Brave1.
This spring, Hrytseniuk told Business Insider in Kyiv that more than 200 local companies were developing AI-based components for drones, missiles, radars and other systems. However, they insist machines won’t control drones from start to finish.
Wild Hornets, the manufacturer of the popular Sting interceptor drone, also told Business Insider in May that AI will be gradually integrated at almost every stage of flight operations — target detection, identification and, later, terminal guidance.
A spokesperson for the company said humans will still make the final decision on what to strike. Since Russia is constantly changing its tactics, interceptor operators must keep tabs on these changes and make necessary adjustments, they said.
As autonomous systems become more common on the battlefield in Ukraine, commanders also told Business Insider that humans need to remain in the loop.
Grek, the call sign of a company commander overseeing robots with Ukraine’s 21st Unmanned Systems “Kraken” Regiment, said the goal is to “allow people to focus on the tasks where human judgment has the greatest value.”
U.S. Army officers stressed that NATO is using the operational environment in Ukraine to inform military planning for a potential future confrontation.
“We’re not copying Ukraine,” said Capt. Ronan Sefton. “We’re learning from Ukraine.”
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BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government is moving to turn the country’s foreign intelligence agency into a more potent weapon to counter mounting threats from adversaries including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Under the proposed reform, spies working for Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND, could carry out acts of sabotage, conduct offensive cyber operations and pursue more aggressive espionage operations. Until now, those spies have been limited to information-gathering operations due to intentional restraints put in place after World War II to prevent a repeat of the abuses perpetrated by the Nazi spy apparatus.
But with the threat of sabotage and influence operations from Russia growing — and concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump could halt or leverage the intelligence sharing Germany heavily relies on — Merz’s government has moved to push through a historic strengthening of the country’s foreign intelligence apparatus.
“We are daily targets of espionage, sabotage, cyberattacks and covert actions by foreign powers aimed at destabilizing Germany, at harming our country and at bringing about political and social changes within our country,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters after the cabinet meeting in Berlin.
“Our mission is to continually adapt the state’s protective mandate to these new threat scenarios,” he added.
The reforms must still be passed by both chambers of parliament before going into effect by 2027.
Nina Warken, the chancellery chief overseeing the BND reforms, suggested Germany can no longer afford to rely so heavily on foreign allies for sophisticated intelligence operations it has long been unable conduct itself.
“So far — and this must be stated objectively — we have relied too heavily in too many security-related areas on our partners to help ensure our security,” Warken said. “In short, we are simply too dependent on the support of other countries’ intelligence services. And in too many areas, this assistance is a one-way street.”
Germany’s postwar foreign intelligence service was founded in 1956 with far more legal constraints than intelligence agencies elsewhere. Those restraints have had the side effect of making Germany particularly dependent on the U.S. for intelligence gathering.
In view of the growing threat from Russia, leading politicians now argue that it is time for Germany’s spies to be given the ability to hit back harder. That argument took on new urgency following the sighting of an explosive-laden drone at Leipzig-Halle Airport in eastern Germany last week that was found near a Ukrainian Antonov plane used to transport munitions.
Dobrindt, in remarks after the incident, stopped short of naming Russia as responsible for the drone incursion, but said that “a hybrid threat is evident” and that such perils do not originate from amateurs but are “often linked to foreign powers.” On Wednesday, he said results of an investigation into the drone incident were still pending.
Germany’s security “worsened significantly” in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by the country’s domestic intelligence agency last year.
Germany’s intelligence reform would allow authorities to actively respond to hybrid threats such as the Leipzig drone incident. Measures could range from exposing those involved or destroying their property to sabotaging explosives before an attack or feeding adversaries false intelligence afterward, according to the proposed reform. Any response would have to be directly linked to the original incident and could not endanger life or physical safety.
“We are expanding the technical capabilities of the intelligence services and granting them active, operational powers,” Dobrindt said. “This is not just about enabling the services to see and hear better in the future and analyze information more quickly. Above all, it is about being able to take active measures against our attackers and adversaries.”
The BND will also face fewer data-protection restrictions, allowing it to make greater use of tools such as AI and facial recognition and to store data for longer periods of time, according to the proposed reform. The agency is also set to receive more funding in the coming years. Merz’s government increased the agency’s budget by about 26 percent to €1.51 billion this year.
BERLIN — Europe is scrambling for more Patriot interceptors to donate to an increasingly desperate Ukraine, which is racing to reinforce its ballistic missile defenses before Russia’s expected winter assault.
Kyiv is seeking hundreds of interceptors, but new production will come too late, the war with Iran has strained U.S. supplies, and several of Ukraine’s leading European backers say they have few left that they can safely donate.
“Over the last few months, Russia fires more missiles a week at us than we get from partners over months,” former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last week. In July, Ukrainian air defense intercepted only 29 out of 195 Russian ballistic missiles, with another 40 failing to reach their targets, Ukraine’s defense ministry said.
Germany, one of Ukraine’s top military aid donors, has already transferred Patriot systems and missiles to Ukraine. But Berlin must now balance Kyiv’s increasingly urgent needs against the minimum stocks required to protect Germany and meet its NATO commitments. Other European countries are also weighing whether to hang on to their interceptors or give them to Ukraine.
“We are really reaching our limits here,” Brig. Gen. Jürgen Schrödl, a senior German defense ministry official, said at a panel in Berlin shortly after last month’s NATO summit in Ankara. “We also have to ensure our own protection.”
Berlin and other Northern European capitals have urged counterparts elsewhere on the continent to examine what more military equipment and financial support they could release.
“I think it’s not sustainable for Europe in the long run,” Norwegian Defense Minister Tore O. Sandvik told POLITICO. “All the European countries have to step up.”
That’s putting pressure on countries with stocks of Patriot interceptors like Poland, Spain and Greece. The shortage primarily concerns Patriot PAC-3 and PAC-2 missiles, which are among Ukraine’s few effective defenses against fast-moving Russian ballistic weapons.
Ukraine can use other, often cheaper, air-defense systems against drones and cruise missiles. The country is racing to develop its homegrown Freyja interceptor, but the anti-ballistic system still requires investment, engineering work and testing before it can fill that role.
Until Freyja is ready, Ukraine needs an immediate answer to Russia’s ballistic missiles. “One of the priority directions is Patriot — PAC-3 or PAC-2,” Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told POLITICO. “The first [solution] is buying, or receiving from stockpiles, PAC-3 and PAC-2 interceptors.”
Stuck in Washington
The Patriot dependence makes U.S. President Donald Trump essential to Kyiv: Most PAC-3 interceptors are produced in America, which means their sale and any production deals are subject to White House decisions.
During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump last month, “The main topic was Patriot interceptors,” according to a senior official familiar with the talks.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump speak on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey on July 8, 2026. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Trump raised hopes at the Ankara summit when he said Ukraine would be allowed to produce U.S.-designed Patriot interceptors under license — a step that could eventually reduce Kyiv’s dependence on scarce American deliveries.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker made clear that production would not solve the immediate shortage.
“A long-term production agreement will not be concluded before this winter,” he told Fox Business, and manufacturing the first missiles would take longer still.
But Trump has now walked that back, last week saying: “We have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it. But it’s a hard thing to give away, that kind of technology.”
Following a Reuters report that the U.S. had almost exhausted its missile stocks thanks to the war against Iran, Trump is now focusing on rebuilding U.S. supplies. Asked on Thursday about Zelenskyy’s calls for more Patriot missiles, he said: “We want missiles too.”
Ukraine has also signed a deal to get PAC-2 interceptors being made in Germany, but they are unlikely to arrive before next year.
Faced with a shortage of interceptors, Kyiv is now looking at a more aggressive campaign to hit Russian launchers.
“The Russians must understand that a few minutes after the launch, the entire team that launches the rocket must die from our ballistic missile,” Fedorov said.
Europe’s unbalanced effort
That puts the immediate burden on Europe, where allies are once again searching their own arsenals — and one another’s — for interceptors that could reach Ukraine before winter.
Germany supplied three Patriot systems from its own military stocks and subsequently arranged two more through a deal under which the U.S. would replenish the Bundeswehr. The Netherlands assembled the components for another complete system, including five launchers, a radar and missiles.
But with stocks now stretched thin, governments face limits of their own.
Warsaw confirmed in July that it had released several PAC-3 interceptors after requests from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and senior U.S. commanders. Polish outlet Defence24 reported that just five missiles were transferred.
Mark Rutte speaks at a press conference ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara on July 6, 2026. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Even that triggered a political backlash. Opposition lawmakers accused the government of weakening the country’s defenses at a time when Russian missiles and drones have repeatedly strayed across its border.
Countries closer to Russia are now becoming less likely to give up existing Patriots because their armed forces already regarded their air defenses as insufficient for national requirements, according to a European diplomat granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic contacts.
That is shifting attention toward Southern European countries, which have contributed less to Ukraine than Germany and many Northern European donors.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed in 2024 that Madrid was sending missiles to Ukraine, but the government has not disclosed their type or amount.
Spain’s defense ministry did not respond to a question from POLITICO whether it had recently been approached for more interceptors or was considering another transfer. It instead pointed to Spain’s wider military support for Ukraine and its NATO commitments.
Greece — which traditionally sees fellow NATO member Turkey as its greatest security threat — has not announced any Patriot transfers to Ukraine. Greek media reported in July that Ukraine had requested as many as 200 older PAC-2 interceptors from Athens.
The Greek defense ministry did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
Prying open Europe’s arsenals
This isn’t the first time European allies have had to cobble together Patriot missile deliveries from their own limited stocks.
At a February meeting, Ukraine’s Fedorov said he and Rutte worked through a list of interceptors held by European allies, asking governments for whatever they could spare.
“Dear defense minister of Poland, can you give us five?” Fedorov recalled in this week’s interview.
Berlin offered to top up the effort. “If you get 20 out of all the countries, I’ll give you an extra five,” Fedorov quoted German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as saying. “That’s the exercise we had to perform to get more than 20. And it is a hard mission.”
Kyiv is continuing those types of talks with its allies.
“Of course, Ukrainian diplomats have been working with Spain, Greece and everyone in the world who has [PACs],” said the senior official familiar with the talks. “Everything depends on the U.S., and the lack of political will to help influences everyone else.”
“The American administration could have helped, but they don’t do this. And as the result it’s been hard with everyone else,” they added.
For Kyiv, the arguments over allied stockpiles are unfolding against a ticking clock. With demand for PAC-3 interceptors surging in the Middle East, the Pentagon replenishing its own stock and many European countries worrying about their own ability to fend off a future Russian attack, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine was struggling to buy, exchange or secure any available rounds.
“We are literally fighting for every missile,” Sybiha said.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu has blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for a recent drone crash in the southeast of her country.
A drone crashed and exploded in the village of Crocmaz on Sunday, causing a fire that damaged several properties but caused no casualties. After conducting preliminary analysis on the fragments, local police said it could be a “missile-like drone.”
“I strongly condemn the latest violation of our airspace,” Sandu wrote on X, adding: “This is a direct consequence of Russia’s war, and it endangers us all.”
Sandu said that the “risk to human life in our region is real and growing. It must stop.”
The affected village is close to southwestern Ukraine, particularly the Odesa region, which came under a heavy missile and drone attack by Russia on the same day.
Moldovan police said that to date, no other aircraft of this type have been found on Moldovan territory and research is continuing to establish “the exact type and origin of the aircraft as well as the circumstances of the incident.”
Last week, local police discovered wreckage from a Russian Geran-2-type drone near the village of Văleni in southern Moldova.
After the incidents, Moldova’s foreign ministry recalled its ambassador from Russia for consultations.
A World Health Organization (WHO) warehouse storing emergency health supplies in Ukraine has been destroyed, as Kyiv and Moscow exchanged fresh missile strikes overnight, causing several deaths and leaving tens of people injured.
Russia launched a “massive” strike on Odesa overnight, according to Ukrainian emergency services, with at least eight people injured. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an X post on Sunday that the “brutal strike” on the city targeted energy infrastructure as well as residential buildings and the port.
A separate Russian strike on the Saltivka district of Kharkiv killed two people and injured at least 21 more, according to the head of the region’s state administration. Ukraine’s emergency services said firefighters rescued seven people from the upper floors of a high-rise building.
Another overnight strike on the Zhytomyr region injured three people, Ukrainian emergency services said.
Meanwhile, five people died in a Ukrainian overnight drone attack on the Russian city of Belgorod, the regional crisis centre said on Sunday. Acting governor Alexander Shuvayev said earlier on Sunday that three people were killed and 25 others injured in the “massive terrorist drone attack” by Kyiv. The death toll later rose to five.
Zelenskyy condemned what he described as “ballistic terror” attacks on Odesa, Kharkiv, Pavlohrad, and other regions. “Every such attack on human life serves as a constant reminder – we need more pressure, more sanctions against Russia, and more air defense for Ukraine,” he said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said on Sunday that a WHO warehouse in Dnipro in Ukraine was destroyed by a strike on Friday.
The warehouse held humanitarian supplies for frontline health facilities. No casualties were reported, as a WHO staff member and drivers managed to evacuate 130 of approximately 300 pallets and left the area before the attack.
“I cannot say loudly enough: attacks on health care MUST STOP. Otherwise, people are deprived of lifesaving healthcare,” Tedros said.
Germany is being hit by hybrid warfare attacks from foreign powers on a “daily” basis, the country’s interior minister has warned, after a drone packed with explosives was found at Leipzig Airport earlier this week.
Espionage, sabotage, cyber attacks and covert actions “with the aim of destabilizing Germany or directly harming it” are a “constant reality,” German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told BILD in an interview on Sunday.
Dobrindt suggested on Thursday that a drone incident at Leipzig Airport may have been an attack by a state actor. The minister has stopped short of specifying which foreign powers are behind the hybrid attacks.
Leipzig Airport serves as a strategic hub for NATO, including for military transports to Ukraine. The airport is also the international courier service DHL’s largest European air hub and serves as a temporary home for some Ukrainian Antonov aircraft, protecting them from Russian attacks. An armed drone was found just meters away from such a plane, German officials said Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Germany’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Russia is behind daily attempts to “exert influence here in Germany in a manner that seeks to undermine our democracy and erode trust in politics and politicians.”
The Kremlin has been accused of seeking to sway September’s elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, states in the former communist East Germany where pro-Russian sentiment remains strong and where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could take power for the first time at the state level.
Russian airstrikes across Ukraine have killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more in multiple drone and missile attacks overnight, according to local authorities.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched six missiles and 151 attack drones throughout Friday night, hitting 12 locations. Ukrainian authorities managed to down 135 drones.
The attacks came as Ukraine continues to urge Western allies to provide more air defense systems and interceptor missiles.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the drone attacks killed three people — a 3-year-old child and the child’s grandparents — in a village in the Kyiv region. The six ballistic missiles struck civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, killing one person, he said.
“More pressure is needed. New sanctions that will prevent the production of these ballistic missiles,” Zelenskyy said on X. “And we definitely need more protection for our people,” he added, appealing to allies to provide missile interceptors to strengthen Ukraine’s defenses against Russia’s aerial assault.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, in southeast Ukraine, three people were killed and four were wounded following the overnight attack, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said.
A further five people were killed and nearly 50 people wounded in the regions of Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson, according to regional authorities.
Separately, Zelenskyy visited Serbia on Saturday — his first trip to the country since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to meet with President Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Đuro Macut.
Zelenskyy said the talks had focused on rebuilding infrastructure, readying a free-trade agreement this year, and preparing for the winter to come.
President Donald Trump on Thursday announced tariffs on polysilicon and its related products, in his administration’s latest attempt to eliminate China’s choke points in the global supply chain for solar panels and semiconductors.
But Trump’s directive won’t take effect until Dec. 4 — well after November’s midterm elections and a planned September summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping — as the administration grapples with voters complaining of high prices and fragile trade negotiations with China.
“This will bring the supply chain here,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said of the order on Thursday alongside Trump at the White House. “We’ve got the industry here, it’s too small, and it’s going to explode.”
Because polysilicon is used in semiconductors and solar panels, it’s essential for military hardware and everyday electronics like cell phones and laptops, in addition to the world’s fastest-growing energy source.
The order imposes a 15 percent tariff on imported polysilicon and its derivatives, as well as minimum prices for imports of polysilicon, polysilicon ingots and wafers, solar cells and solar modules.
It also includes a clause intended to prevent companies from stockpiling those materials between now and December, authorizing Customs and Border Protection to restrict imports if it suspects an importer is attempting to dodge the higher duties.
Trump’s order is the result of a Commerce Department investigation launched last July into national security risks in the polysilicon supply chain, as part of a broader effort to shift supply chains away from China for multiple industries including wind turbines and robotics.
China has a near-monopoly on the production of polysilicon, according to S&P Global. But recent U.S. efforts to limit key areas of trade with China have already drawn a backlash from Beijing, which earlier this week implemented new controls on drone exports to the U.S.
The White House emphasized the order’s impact on domestic semiconductor production, a key focus as the U.S. looks to build out infrastructure related to artificial intelligence. Trump said the U.S. will “have a big percentage of the chip business by the time I leave office.”
But Thursday’s order may have a big impact on the solar industry, according to Jon Toomey, president of the pro-tariff Coalition for a Prosperous America organization.
“This proclamation delivers the most significant global trade protection action for the American polysilicon and solar industry in the modern era,” Toomey said in a statement. “For the first time, the United States is protecting the entire solar supply chain with a single action — and rewarding the manufacturers that build here — while taking a significant step to bolster the domestic semiconductor supply chain.”
BERLIN — A drone packed with explosives discovered at Leipzig Airport is raising fears of foreign interference in upcoming German regional elections in which far-right politicians have campaigned on fears of escalations with Moscow.
The drone — found at a strategic airport serving Ukrainian and NATO aircraft as well as a major DHL logistics hub — is being seen as evidence of a potential act by “foreign powers,” said German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt.
The Kremlin has been accused of seeking to sway September’s elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, states in the former communist East Germany where pro-Russian sentiment remains strong and where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could take power for the first time at the state level.
“We do of course see that Russia attempts every day, in one way or another — through hybrid means and various measures — to exert influence here in Germany in a manner that seeks to undermine our democracy and erode trust in politics and politicians,” said Martin Giese, a foreign ministry spokesperson.
Russian disinformation campaigns have portrayed German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his government as warmongers. They aim to undermine the already unpopular chancellor and boost Russia-friendly forces such as the AfD and the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — both of which are strong in eastern Germany.
“The state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and in eastern Germany are, of course, a major target of Russian influence, because these are pivotal elections in the heart of Europe,” said Stefan Meister, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
He said that it is too early to attribute the explosive-laden drone to Russia as investigations are still ongoing. But he added that Moscow is clearly waging a broad hybrid campaign targeting the region ahead of next month’s votes.
“This could be the first time right-wing populists come to power,” Meister said. “And with that, the chancellor might even fall — or at the very least, the coalition would be severely weakened — and a pro-Russian party would come to power in one of the federal states.”
“There is a major campaign underway on the Russian side to influence these elections in favor of the AfD and the BSW,” he added.
The drone incident risks raising fears in Germany that their country’s support for Ukraine is bringing the war closer to home.
The Leipzig-Halle airport has been a target in the past. In July 2024, an incendiary parcel caught fire at a DHL facility there shortly before it was due to be loaded onto an aircraft. European investigators later identified 22 suspects allegedly working for Russian military intelligence in the wider parcel plot.
The airport is among Germany’s most strategically important transport hubs.
Polls show that the AfD has a chance of winning an outright majority in Saxony-Anhalt on Sept. 6. | Jens Schülter/AFP via Getty Images
It is the home base for NATO’s SALIS airlift program, which gives nine participating countries access to Ukrainian Antonov aircraft capable of carrying oversized military cargo for national, EU and alliance missions.
The incident adds to a feeling of insecurity, which could help populist parties, said Meister.
“It’s once again obvious that we’re simply very vulnerable,” he said.
An interior ministry spokesperson said Wednesday that the government was monitoring a campaign it called “Matryoshka,” and regarded it as serious.
German officials said this week that fabricated videos that falsely accused candidates of corruption, sexual misconduct and other crimes appeared to have mimicked trusted outlets such as the German regional public broadcaster ARD and the U.K.’s BBC.
Independent researchers have gone further. Deutsche Welle counted more than 180 fake posts linked to Matryoshka targeting September’s three elections. The posts largely attacked candidates from centrist parties, while sparing the AfD and BSW, according to researchers.
“We can’t rule out the possibility that foreign powers are behind this,” Dobrindt told public broadcaster ZDF Wednesday evening. “That will now be part of the investigation, but there are many indications pointing in that direction,” he said.
Dobrindt stopped short of naming Russia specifically in his statements but said that “a hybrid threat is evident” and that such threats do not originate from amateurs but are “often linked to foreign powers.”
“Of course, we all want to know which foreign powers are involved. But it would be reckless to give credence to any kind of speculation at this point,” he added.
Leipzig Airport serves as a strategic hub for NATO, including for military transports to Ukraine. The airport is also international courier service DHL’s largest European air hub and serves as a temporary home for some Ukrainian Antonov aircraft, protecting them from Russian attacks. The armed drone was found just meters away from such a plane, said officials Wednesday.
Armin Schuster, minister of the interior for Saxony — where Leipzig is located — told ZDF that the incident represented a new threat level.
“Without wanting to preempt the investigation, I would describe this as a suspected attack scenario because this is the first time we’ve had a drone that was also loaded with explosives,” he said. “That’s new.”
An airport worker found the drone Tuesday night. Officers disarmed the device by removing its detonator, which had failed to go off. In a separate incident at the same airport, another flying object struck a DHL cargo aircraft as it was being diverted away from the airport after the explosive-laden drone was found.
The intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine has bounced back to previous highs, according to long-time Ukraine watchers — a welcome boost during a critical window of opportunity for the Ukrainian war effort.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the intelligence committee’s ranking member and a longtime proponent of more U.S. assistance to Ukraine, told POLITICO he sees evidence of an improved intel-sharing agreement — and believes it’s helped Kyiv gain an advantage in Moscow’s four-year-long war.
“I don’t want to get into any specifics, but it has improved,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s use of long-range drones and missiles has allowed it to strike deep within Russian territory and strengthen its position.
In recent months, Kyiv has carried out more aggressive strikes across Russia, enabling it to take back territory and stabilize the front line. This has afforded the country more leverage as Ukraine looks to parlay battlefield wins to pressure Russia to the negotiating table.
Ukraine’s stronger footing also comes as U.S.-mediated talks to strike a peace deal with Moscow have stalled. Trump’s negotiating team, which includes Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, has been preoccupied with the Iran war, bumping Ukraine down its priority list.
But in that time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears to have risen in President Donald Trump’s estimation as Kyiv has made gains against Russia.
In early July, a barrage of Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure forced Moscow — one of the world’s top fuel exporters — to halt its exports of diesel. The increased frequency of those kinds of targeted attacks has put the Kremlin in a tighter spot, creating what Kyiv has argued is a window of opportunity for Ukraine to leverage its current advantage to end the war.
Republican Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), another member of the intel committee, and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that intel-sharing between the U.S. and Ukraine has increased at a moment of strategic importance.
“It sure seems like that,” Cornyn said. “Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a Democratic armed services committee member, told POLITICO he’s also seen signs of greater communication between Ukraine and the U.S.
“I was in Ukraine in April 2025 and I was there again in July 2026. And I detect more confidence in the communication,” Kaine said.
Cooperation from the U.S. has been key to Ukraine’s positive turn in fortune, said George Barros, the director of innovation and open source tradecraft at the hawkish Institute for the Study of War. Trump reportedly approved intelligence sharing for Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure last year, which have been essential to creating a “proper incentive structure” to push Moscow to the negotiating table, Barros noted.
The strikes, he said, were “supercharged,” and became significantly more effective when imbued with intelligence from the Americans, part of a “larger, more coherent strategy for how to actually create real costs.”
And American early warning systems, Barros added, have been alerting Ukrainians to incoming Russian missile attacks since the early days of the war.
The White House did not provide details on whether its intelligence-sharing relationship with Ukraine has expanded, though it stressed that Trump is focused on facilitating an end to the war.
“The President wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends,” said the White House spokesperson in a statement. “The President and his team remain committed to continuing to play a constructive role in ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we’ll ultimately get a peace deal done.”
The CIA and ODNI did not respond to a request for comment.
Washington also stands to benefit from Kyiv’s intelligence, said John Herbst, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003-2006 and still maintains contact with officials in the country.
“There’s no doubt of the following: Ukraine has outstanding intelligence on Russia,” he said.
“When you talk to Ukrainian intelligence officials, you hear confident insights into what is going on in Moscow, and not just in the Kremlin,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Insights of a sort that justify a truly cooperative and reciprocal sharing arrangement.”
German counterterrorism authorities are leading an investigation into an explosive-laden drone that was found overnight at Leipzig airport, an important base for the NATO alliance.
An airport worker discovered the drone carrying an explosive device in a restricted cargo area late Tuesday, according to Dresden Public Prosecutor’s office and Saxony state police. A police bomb disposal robot examined the drone before officers disarmed the device by removing its detonator.
Airport officials temporarily suspended flights and diverted several aircraft. One of the diverted planes, a DHL cargo aircraft, struck another flying object while climbing away from the airport. After landing at Hanover airport, officials found signs of an impact on the aircraft’s nose.
Officials told WELT — which, like POLITICO, is part of the Axel Springer group — that the device’s detonator failed to function, preventing an explosion. They also said the drone was found just meters from a Ukrainian Antonov transport aircraft. According to the report, it contained Semtex, the explosive used in the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.
Leipzig airport hosts the base of operations of NATO’s Strategic Airlift International Solution (SALIS), which gives participating countries access to Antonov cargo planes to transport military equipment. The airport is DHL’s largest European air hub and serves as an aircraft maintenance base for some Ukrainian Antonov aircraft.
According to WELT, security authorities have internally classified the incident as an attempted attack. No suspects had been detained as of Wednesday evening.
Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt interrupted his summer vacation in Italy to meet officials in Leipzig.
Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster described the incident in a statement as “very serious security incident.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, assumed Moscow could be behind the incident. “I hope that all the authorities in Germany will now establish the facts as well. But who else could it have been besides Russia?” he posited on WELT TV.
Russia’s embassy to Germany didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lennart Pfahler contributed reporting from Berlin. This article has been updated.
The European Union has collected €1.4 billion in revenue from immobilized Russian central bank assets and will channel the proceeds to Ukraine, the European Commission announced Wednesday.
In a press release, the Commission said the payment, received Monday, was the “fifth transfer of its kind.” Since the assets have been immobilized, they have generated a total of €8 billion in windfall profits.
Brussels said 95 percent of the latest tranche would go through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism, helping Kyiv repay EU and G7 loans, while the remaining 5 percent would flow through the European Peace Facility to meet Ukraine’s “pressing military and defence needs.”
“Once again we wake up to the news of horrible atrocities by Russia through its aerial attacks on Ukraine,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. “Russia must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilised Russian assets to make sure it does.” Von der Leyen said the EU was making “a further €1.4 billion” available to support Ukraine’s “continued resistance against Russia’s illegal war.”
Her comments came after one of the deadliest Russian attacks on Kyiv this year. Ballistic missiles and drones killed at least 17 people and wounded 44 overnight, striking residential buildings, warehouses and a railway station. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Wednesday that additional missile interceptors “could have saved lives” and blamed delays in Western air-defense deliveries for the mounting casualties.
Over €210 billion in Russian central bank reserves were frozen by the EU after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Since 2024, financial institutions holding those assets have been required to ring-fence the extraordinary profits they generate, allowing Brussels to redirect the proceeds to Ukraine while leaving the underlying reserves untouched.
At this month’s NATO summit in Ankara, allies announced billions of dollars in new arms deals and reaffirmed their commitment to spend more on defense. European governments have made the pledge, and the money is real: European defense spending has doubled since 2019, and by 2030, European NATO member countries are projected to spend in excess of €800 billion a year, up €300 billion from 2025, with equipment spending alone nearly doubling.
But committing money is the easy part. The harder question is whether Europe’s defense industry can turn it into equipment fast enough to matter. Europe’s largest defense manufacturers’ order books now average more than five years for production, and some are closer to nine. Money is flowing in faster than industry can turn it into equipment. But a purchase order is not equipment that can be deployed on the ground and the air.
European countries have long duplicated capabilities rather than pooling them.
The bottleneck sits in the defense industrial system. Deterrence relies on the chain from funding to contracts, then through production, deployment into services, then rapid innovation in the field. Europe’s next goal comes after the spending promise. The continent fields six times as many weapons platforms as the United States, because countries have long duplicated capabilities rather than pooling them. Production ends up split across many small runs that never reach an efficient scale. Ukraine, under pressure, has shown how fast a defense system can move, adapting tactics in weeks and building drone detection networks from consumer electronics. Europe needs to catch up and then accelerate.
Four moves would help Europe accelerate.
The first is multi-speed procurement. Software-led systems such as drones and targeting improve in rapid cycles throughout their deployment and need procurement that can keep up. Israel’s Iron Dome started out as far less capable than it is today and improved continuously in service. European defense ministries have already set up high-speed procurement units with dedicated teams and greater risk tolerance. These need to become mainstream, rather than the exception.
Collaboration in procurement, maintenance and training brings costs down and delivery forward.
The second is military collaboration to reduce fragmentation. Collaboration in procurement, maintenance and training brings costs down and delivery forward. The Tempest project, where the U.K., Italy and Japan are jointly building a next-generation fighter, demonstrates the model: shared development costs that no single country could carry alone. Recent bilateral maritime agreements, and Romania’s use of EU funding to buy European while expanding production at home, show the same logic spreading.
The third is industrial consolidation, which is already underway and needs to move faster. Companies are driving it themselves. Airbus, Leonardo and Thales have agreed to merge their space divisions into a single joint venture with roughly €6.5 billion in revenue and 25,000 employees, and European defense mergers and acquisitions rose 35 percent year over year in the first half of 2025. McKinsey analysis finds that consolidation across key supply chain segments could unlock around €9 billion in annual synergies, more than the current equipment budgets of 24 of Europe’s 30 NATO members. The deepest opportunity sits below the big primes, among the thousands of tier two, three and four suppliers that still duplicate one another’s work. Europe can speed this up by harmonizing requirements, reducing national carve-outs and letting industry do the combining. Consolidation is only half the task. Europe also needs to build sheer capacity — more shipyards, more assembly lines, more of the physical plants that turn orders into hardware — and the capital to fund it. In several categories, Europe simply lacks enough places to build.
Real deterrence means difficult choices, and a public that understands the importance and the cost of security.
The fourth is regulatory unlocking. Full scale-up demands skilled workers retrained, accredited and security cleared from other industries; production sites with preapproved permitting; and alignment of export controls across European allies. These regulatory unlocks now need the same energy and focus as the funding commitment debate.
Real deterrence means difficult choices, and a public that understands the importance and the cost of security. That conversation is only beginning in much of Europe. It must include the potential for “gray zone” cyber strikes on hospitals, arson at industrial sites, drones disrupting ports, undersea data cables cut — these have all occurred, but many citizens do not yet recognize this as having malicious intent.
The opportunity in getting it right is significant. McKinsey and GLOBSEC estimates indicate that every euro of spending on European-manufactured equipment generates two euros of revenue across the European supply chain, and an additional €165 billion a year in equipment spending could create up to 1.2 million jobs. The coming years will reveal how effectively Europe is able to scale up to protect its territory and citizens, and how much of the promised investment becomes lasting deterrence and European jobs. Getting there depends on the whole ecosystem — governments, industry and investors — moving together. Increased spending is important. Spending it effectively matters more.
Jonathan Dimsonis a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office. Mikael Robertsonis a senior partner in the Stockholm office.
NATO’s reliance on the “doctrines of World War II” and its slow adaptation to new forms of warfare make it unlikely Ukraine will ever join the alliance, said Kyiv’s Ambassador to the U.K. and former Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
“For 12 years, I must have personally been working to ensure that we mastered NATO standards, and every year I listened to tales that we were about to join NATO. Unfortunately, we will never join it,” Zaluzhnyi privately told Ukrainian ambassadors in Kyiv on Monday, according to Ukrainian media.
Although “Ukraine needs technologies that are still available in NATO countries today,” like defenses against ballistic missiles, he said, “it is impossible to join an organization that possesses the doctrines of World War II with the level of development that exists in the armed forces of Ukraine.”
Russia has made deep changes to its forces under pressure from the war, and many politicians and intelligence officials worry it could be ready to attack a NATO country by the end of the decade.
Zaluzhnyi’s unusual rebuke underscores a growing change in the alliance’s relationship with Ukraine. The country has shifted from relying on European military support in the early years of the war to becoming one the continent’s most powerful and technologically advanced militaries — far ahead of Western forces in the mass production of drones, missiles and other key systems.
“Ukraine contributes to transatlantic security,” said NATO’s 32 leaders in a joint declaration at the alliance’s Ankara summit last month. In recent military exercises where NATO has invited Ukrainian troops to participate, allied forces have repeatedly been surprised by their tactics and drone use.
“Most likely, NATO will remain in the same form as it is, and will spend 12 years, like Ukraine, transitioning to the standards that need to be achieved in order to be at least half the level of the Russian Federation,” said the retired general.
Zaluzhnyi’s remarks also reflect an enduring Ukrainian frustration with the alliance for stalling its application to join despite officially floating the prospect of eventual membership in 2023. The U.S. and other allies remain opposed.
As a result, Zaluzhnyi said, Ukraine would instead opt to “be tied to blocs and alliances that will probably be formed,” citing the Joint Expeditionary Force — a 10-nation U.K.-led grouping of mainly Nordic and Baltic countries established in 2014 and designed to complement NATO.
“Most likely, we will talk about a European military security bloc,” added Zaluzhnyi.
NATO declined to comment, referring POLITICO to remarks made by alliance Secretary-General Mark Rutte in June, who reiterated the “irreversible path of Ukraine into NATO.”
Zaluzhnyi and Ukraine’s mission to NATO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting from Kyiv.
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